Jon Excell

Last week's poll: what will Euratom exit mean for UK nuclear?

News

The UK's stated intention to leave the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM)  - revealed last month in explanatory notes to the government’s bill authorising Brexit - understandably raised a few eyebrows.  And with 543 readers responding to our poll on the topic it's clearly an emotive issue for many in the engineering community.

Euratom_chart

The treaty - which was signed in 1957 - establishes a common market in nuclear goods, services, capital and people within the EU and includes co-operation agreements with countries including Canada, Japan and the USA. It facilitates UK participation in long-term research and development (R&D) projects, and also provides a framework for international nuclear safeguard compliance.

Numerous experts have warned that leaving the treaty could have a range of negative impacts for the UK: from putting its nuclear new build plans into limbo once again, to undermining the UK's world-leading position in the development of fusion energy.

We asked readers which of these impacts they were most worried about, or whether they felt the UK had the expertise to go it alone.

70 per cent of our respondents felt that the decision would be in some way negative for the industry, with  50 per cent of those who voted singling out its impact on fusion research as the biggest area of concern.

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