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Sir Keir Starmer will announce changes to the planning system designed to speed up the delivery of new nuclear power plants to the United Kingdom on Thursday.
The British Prime Minister will claim that planning reforms “will erase a way” for the introduction of small modular reactors, which are faster to build than the largest existing reactors.
The upheaval will imply the deletion of a list of eight sites favored for larger nuclear patterns, which gives developers more flexibility in the place where they can build.
Ministers will remove the expiration date of nuclear planning rules so that projects are no longer “expired”.
They will also announce plans to set up a new nuclear regulatory working group to supervise the improvement of regulations to help more companies build nuclear projects in the United Kingdom.
“This country has not built a nuclear power plant for decades, we have been disappointed and left behind,” said Starmer.
“I end this, by changing the rules to support the manufacturers of this nation.”
Only one new nuclear power plant, Hinkley Point C in Somerset, is currently under construction in the United Kingdom, developed by EDF de France. But it is delayed by the years and on the budget by billions of pounds.
The project should start generating in 2029 at the earliest and cost up to 46 billion pounds sterling. This is compared to the 2016 initial forecasts that it would start at the end of 2025 and cost 18 billion pounds sterling.
Meanwhile, EDF’s plans and the British government to build a second project in Suffolk in Sizewell are also late while they are trying to persuade institutional investors to commit billions of private funding books.
The government has so far been ambiguous to find out whether or not they want a third project to be built in Wylfa in Anglesey, despite the Last Conservative government buying the site from the Japanese developer Hitachi At the beginning of last year.
Ministers already oversee a competition for private companies to win state support to develop small modular reactors in the United Kingdom, and they will now be included in planning rules for the first time.
Despite the overhaul of planning, the ministers will insist so that they will meet British nuclear security standards.
In September, the government chose four companies to undertake negotiations for the support of taxpayers to their technology: Rolls-Royce, the British engineer Ftse 100, alongside Rivaux belonging to Holtec Britain and Ge Hitachi, and Westinghouse Electric, belonging in Canada.
