Building our nuclear nation: government response to the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025

This publication sets out the government’s response to the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025 . The review found that the UK’s nuclear regulatory system has become fragmented, overly cautious and too slow to support national energy and defence priorities. The government accepts this assessment and is taking forward a comprehensive programme of reform.

Building our nuclear nation: government response to the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025 
 


  PDF  ,  441 KB ,  51 pages

Building our nuclear nation: government response to the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025 (accessible webpage) 
 


  HTML

Building Our Nuclear Nation 
Government Response to the Nuclear 
Regulatory Review 2025 
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (2026) 

© Crown copyright 2026 
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except 
where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-
government-licence/version/3.  
Where we have identified any third-party copyright information you will need to obtain 
permission from the copyright holders concerned.

Building Our Nuclear Nation: Government Response to the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025 
3 
Contents 
Prime Minister’s Foreword ___________________________________________________ 4
Executive summary _________________________________________________________ 6
Objective 1: Reinvigorate Britain’s nuclear sector ________________________________ 8
Organisational Structures and Culture __________________________________________ 8
Streamlining nuclear regulatory structures _____________________________________ 8
Restoring proportionality to the sector ________________________________________ 9
Resetting organisational culture ____________________________________________ 11
Capability, retention and innovation ___________________________________________ 12
Holding Government and Industry accountable __________________________________ 13
International Harmonisation _________________________________________________ 13
Objective 2: Streamline planning and environmental assessments ________________ 15
Protecting nature and the environment in a more strategic and proportionate way _______ 15
Habitats Regulations ____________________________________________________ 16
Environmental Impact Assessments ________________________________________ 16
Protected landscapes and Biodiversity Net-Gain _______________________________ 17
Reforming and accelerating the foundations of the planning system __________________ 17
Judicial review reform _____________________________________________________ 19
Making the planning and environmental permitting system work for nuclear ____________ 19
Fleet delivery and siting __________________________________________________ 20
Regulatory justification ___________________________________________________ 20
Environmental permitting _________________________________________________ 20
Decommissioning and waste management ___________________________________ 21
Conclusion _______________________________________________________________ 22
Annex A: Implementation plans ______________________________________________ 23
Annex B: List of abbreviations _______________________________________________ 48

Building Our Nuclear Nation: Government Response to the Nuclear Regulatory Review 2025 
4 
Prime Minister’s Foreword  
People forget nuclear power is part of Britain’s industrial heritage. Britain was the 
first civil nuclear power. Calder Hall, in Cumbria, the first commercial-scale nuclear 
power station in the world. But that was just the start. In the subsequent decade, we 
built 21 reactors. That’s not a misprint. In the late 1950s and 1960s Britain built 21 
nuclear reactors in just under a decade. We also built most of our motorway network 
and many new towns. And this in a Britain that had just established national parks in 
every corner of England and Wales, from the Lake District to the South Downs; 
Northumberland to the Pembrokeshire Coast. 
The lessons of our history are clear: Britain can have a successful nuclear industry, 
we can build power stations quickly and it need not threaten our glorious natural 
inheritance. Unfortunately, over time, these lessons have been forgotten. The UK 
has struggled to bring new nuclear power stations online at the pace, scale or 
cost required to meet our future energy needs. Indeed, we have not completed a 
commercial nuclear reactor since Sizewell B in 1995. Our regulatory, environmental 
and planning processes have become too fragmented, too cautious and too slow, 
driving up costs. Projects are frequently delayed. And the way we protect nature 
has deteriorated into an adversarial system that sees building and nature as a zero-
sum competition, with some participants that defend regulations not nature itself.  
The overall result is that we become bogged down in processes that do not actually 
deliver additional nuclear safety or protections for nature. This slows deve

[... truncated]