Poll results: Nuclear waste disposal

According to the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the estimated cost of cleaning up the waste from 20th-century nuclear power plants currently stands at £131bn. What’s more, this figure does not include the construction of a geological disposal facility (GDF), a vast underground storage space for waste which was first suggested nearly 50 years ago but which has yet to even find a viable location.

In recent weeks, however, the story has been about the expansion of new nuclear, with the prime minister announcing a target of 25 per cent nuclear in the UK’s energy mix (it currently stands at 16 per cent, with several plants nearing end-of-service). Westminster’s Nuclear All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) also published a roadmap calling for 15GW of new nuclear generation by 2035 and 30GW by 2050, comprised of both large-scale plants of the Hinkley C-scale alongside small modular reactors (SMRs) being developed by a Rolls-Royce-led consortium.