\n<\/p>\n
A government taskforce has finalised its plans to speed up and lower the cost of rolling out a new generation of nuclear reactors by streamlining UK regulation.<\/p>\n
The nuclear regulatory taskforce was set up by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, in February after the government promised to rip up \u201carchaic rules\u201d and slash regulations to \u201cget Britain building\u201d.<\/p>\n
It published its interim report in August, which led a coalition of 25 civil society groups to warn of the dangers of cutting nuclear safety regulations. It said the proposals lacked \u201ccredibility and rigour\u201d.<\/p>\n
The taskforce was led by John Fingleton, the former head of the Office of Fair Trading. He said of the final report: \u201cOur solutions are radical, but necessary. By simplifying regulation, we can maintain or enhance safety standards while finally delivering nuclear capacity safely, quickly, and affordably.\u201d<\/p>\n
The recommendations include restructuring the nuclear industry\u2019s regulatory bodies to create a single commission for nuclear regulation, and changing environmental and planning regimes \u201cto enhance nature and deliver projects quicker\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, said the new rules would form a crucial part of delivering the changes needed to drive new nuclear \u201cin a safe, affordable way\u201d.<\/p>\n
The report was welcomed by Tom Greatrex, the chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association. He said the report represented an \u201cunprecedented opportunity to make nuclear regulation more coherent, transparent and efficient\u201d that could make projects \u201cfaster and less expensive to deliver\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cToo often, costly and bureaucratic processes have stood in the way of our energy security, the fight against the climate crisis, and protecting the natural environment, to which nuclear is essential,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Sam Richards, the chief executive of pro-nuclear campaign group Britain Remade, said it could mark \u201ca watershed moment for cutting the cost of new nuclear in Britain\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Business Today<\/span><\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cThe findings of the taskforce lay bare the litany of regulations that make Britain the most expensive place in the world to build nuclear power stations,\u201d Richards said.<\/p>\n \u201cAt a time when Britain\u2019s electricity bills are among the world\u2019s highest, our regulatory system forced EDF to spend nearly \u00a3280,000 per fish protected. This is indefensible. These types of modifications have added years in construction and billions in costs; costs that ultimately get passed on to consumers in higher bills.\u201d<\/p>\n Fingleton added: \u201cThis is a once in a generation opportunity. The problems are systemic, rooted in unnecessary complexity, and a mindset that favours process over outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A government taskforce has finalised its plans to speed up and lower the cost of rolling out a new generation of nuclear reactors by streamlining UK regulation. The nuclear regulatory taskforce was set up by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, in February after the government promised to rip up \u201carchaic rules\u201d and slash regulations to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[4932,220,1436,1664,19024,6315,9656,19770,7517],"class_list":{"0":"post-34899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-built","9":"tag-nuclear","10":"tag-plan","11":"tag-power","12":"tag-reactors","13":"tag-regulations","14":"tag-simpler","15":"tag-spearhead","16":"tag-taskforce"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/34900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}