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Sir Keir Starmer will announce on Thursday changes to the planning system designed to speed up the distribution of new nuclear power stations in the UK.
The British Prime Minister will claim that planning reforms will “clear a road” for introducing small modular reactors, who are faster to build than existing larger reactors.
Shake-up will include the removal of a list of eight countries favored for larger nuclear schemes, giving developers more flexibility in the place where they can build.
Ministers will remove the expiration date in nuclear planning rules so that projects no longer receive “time”.
They will also notify plans to create a new nuclear regulatory group to oversee the improvements of regulations to help more companies build nuclear projects in the UK.
“This country has not built a nuclear power station for decades, we have been released and left behind,” means Starmer.
“I am ending it, changing the rules to support the builders of this nation.”
Only a new nuclear power station, Hinkley Point C in Somersset, is currently being built in the UK, developed by France’s Edf. But it is delayed for years and over the billions of pounds.
The project will start generating in 2029 as soon as possible, and costing up to 46bn. This is compared to the initial forecasts from 2016 that would begin at the end of 2025 and would cost £ 18BN.
Meanwhile, plans from EDF and the British government to build a second project in Suffolk in Sizewell are also behind the schedule as they try to persuade institutional investors to make billions of pounds private funds.
The government has so far been equivalent if they want a third project to be built at Wylfa in Anglesey, despite the latest Tory government that buys the site from Japanese developer Hitachi early last year.
Ministers are already overseeing 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 the first time planning rules.
Despite the planning regulation, ministers will insist that they support Britain’s nuclear security standards.
In September, the government chose four companies to enter into taxpayers’ support negotiations for their technology: Rolls-Royce, British engineer FTSE 100, along with US Holtec British and GE Hitachi rivals, and Canadian-owned Westinghouse.
