Don’t get ‘locked in’ by EU rules, top nuclear adviser warns Burnham
LONDON — Britain should not feel “locked into” pre-Brexit EU environmental rules as it tries to rapidly boost its nuclear power capacity, a top adviser to the government has warned.
John Fingleton, author of an influential government-commissioned review into how red tape is blocking new U.K. nuclear projects, said in an interview that Whitehall should not dampen efforts to boost domestic capacity through “risk aversion.”
“I think on some of the environmental things there’s a risk that people in the system legally think we’re locked into EU regulation circa 2022 when we left [the EU],” he said.
“When the reality is that member states within the European Union have a lot of freedom to be flexible within the EU framework. And I don’t think the U.K. should, in its discussions with the European Union, accept less flexibility than a member state has in terms of our ability to comply with that.”
The Labour government has promised to bring forward a “golden age of nuclear,” signing off on both Sizewell C and Rolls-Royce’s small modular reactors since entering office in July 2024.
But it still faces four of the U.K.’s five existing power stations closing down by 2030. Hinkley Point C will be the first new nuclear power station in the U.K. since Sizewell B opened in 1995.
Fingleton’s 2025 review urged ministers to bring forward a “radical reset” of the U.K.’s nuclear regulations, including scrapping duplication across existing environmental laws.
The U.K. is currently negotiating a post-Brexit “reset” in relations with the European Union. As part of those talks, both parties are seeking so-called “dynamic alignment” across electricity markets. This would mean the U.K. potentially following EU rules on electricity, while making it easier to trade electricity in and out of the trading bloc.
So far, discussions have not extended to nuclear policy and environmental protections, but the U.K. brought its existing EU-compliant habitat regulations into domestic law during the Brexit process.
Fingleton stressed that the U.K. should not impose more stringent interpretations of these regulations than rival nuclear markets in the EU. This follows supplier EDF paying out up to £700 million to protect marine life at Hinkley Point C — including an infamous “fish disco.”
“We don’t always have a trade-off between the environment and building things, but we often create an artificial one by making it very site-specific,” Fingleton warned.
He argued that with a reformed nuclear framework developers could have instead spent “a fraction of that on other measures to improve fish in the river,” this would “have a better environmental outcome and less delay … and lower costs for nuclear.”
Message to Burnham
Fingleton also said that ministers should not rush to implement all the recommendations of his 2025 review, saying Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s new crop of ministers have time to make future legislation as effective as possible — and should use it.
“I think it’s really important to get the legislation right rather than to rush it,” Fingleton said. “So probably, if I was asked: ‘Should you take an extra few months to get this right rather than rush it through?’ I would ease the time limit in order to get the right answer — because it’s important rather than urgent.”
Former Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s response to Fingleton’s report committed to “implementing everything [in the recommendations] by the end of 2027, subject to legislative timelines.” Governments have historically been “too cautious and too slow” on nuclear reform, Starmer wrote back in March.
“We are taking forward the recommendations of the Nuclear Regulatory Review and have published our implementation plan, with all reforms expected to be completed by the end of 2027,” a DESNZ spokesperson said.
