Nominations open for new UK plant sites

27 January 2009

The UK government has given the nuclear industry two months in which to nominate sites for the first wave of new nuclear power plants. The call for nominations came as the criteria were published against which potential sites will be assessed.
 
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has published the criteria as part of the response to the Strategic Siting Assessment (SSA) consultation conducted in 2008. The criteria were released at a meeting of the Nuclear Development Forum (NDF) one year on from the publication of the Nuclear Energy White Paper.
 
The NDF brings together senior representatives from the nuclear industry including vendors, operators, key suppliers, contractors and unions involved in the industry, and government. It meets three times per year and aims to support and advise the government's Office for Nuclear Development (OND) in its role to develop and maintain the UK as one of the best markets in the world for companies to invest in nuclear power.
 
Industry has told the UK government that sites near existing nuclear facilities are best suited for new nuclear power plants. DECC said that any site can be nominated for a new nuclear station provided it is up and running by 2025 and it meets the conditions set out by the government.
 
Nominators must inform local authorities and landowners that they plan to nominate a site. They must also publicise that they plan to nominate a site, for example, through the local media. The deadline for nominations is 31 March 2009. Shortly after this date, the government will publish the nominated sites and there will be an initial month-long opportunity for the public to comment.
 
The government will then conduct the Strategic Siting Assessment, when the nominated sites will be assessed at a strategic level for their suitability against a number of siting criteria. Sites assessed as suitable will then be listed on the draft Nuclear National Policy Statement (NPS), which will be open for consultation. From 2010, developers may apply to the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) for planning permission for those sites found to be "strategically suitable" in the Nuclear NPS.
 
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) owns a range of nuclear sites across Great Britain, some dating back to the pioneering days of nuclear research. Among these are the first-generation Magnox power plant sites and the enormous Sellafield complex, itself including the Calder Hall and Windscale Advanced Gas-cooled Reactor prototype plots, which both supplied power in the past. The NDA has said it will put forward some of these sites to the UK government's SSA process. It has said that parcels of land at Wylfa, Oldbury, Bradwell and Sellafield are to be nominated.
 
EDF Energy, new owner of British Energy, has said that it will ensure all the potential new build sites it owns in England and Wales are nominated to the government's SSA process. The company intends to nominate the following sites: Hinkley Point in Somerset; Sizewell in Suffolk; Heysham in Lancashire; Hartlepool on Teesside; and Dungeness in Kent . In addition, EDF Energy owns land at Bradwell in Essex and at Wylfa on Anglesey which the NDA has said it will nominate. EDF Energy said it will work with the NDA to ensure appropriate nominations are made. 
 
Ed Miliband, the UK's energy and climate change minister, told the NDF, "We've taken some big steps towards next generation nuclear in the year since the publication of our white paper, the industry continues to gear up to invest and we are on course to see new nuclear feeding into the grid by 2018. EdF has firm plans for new reactors on British Energy land, and other companies have started to form joint ventures."
 
He added, "We'll be judging each site that gets nominated against the criteria we have set out today and there will be plenty of opportunities for local authorities and the public to have their say on the options tabled."
 
Miliband said, "Nuclear power can improve energy security and help the drive towards low carbon energy supplies. Alongside renewables and cleaner fossil fuels, it will help us meet our climate change goals as well as ensuring the future supply of energy for the UK."