RadWaste

Posted: 19th August 2026

Special investigation: UK’s nuclear waste a ‘calamity for future generations’. Plans to dispose of high-level nuclear waste over the long term remain uncertain. Plans to deal with nuclear waste must be considered by the new energy secretary Miatta Fahnbullaeh. Britain is planning a new fleet of nuclear reactors – without a repository for high-grade legacy waste. The UK’s efforts to find a location for an underground nuclear waste burial site have stalled. New energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh must review two remaining areas in Cumbria, after three were abandoned following community pushback, Energy Voice has learned. Two sites, Mid Copeland and South Copeland, near existing nuclear waste storage facilities at Sellafield, are being assessed for “permanent” nuclear waste storage in a planned geological disposal facility (GDF), the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) confirmed in an emailed statement. With a UK nuclear burial site undetermined, storage at Sellafield time-limited, and three major nuclear projects expected to operate beyond 2055, government has been accused of “kicking the can down the road”. Further, the National Wealth Fund (NWF) did not factor long-term waste disposal into decisions to invest in Sizewell C, Energy Voice has also learned. The state-owned body backed the UK’s new 3.2GW nuclear power station in Suffolk with £36.6 billion in debt finance. Its chief investment officer Ian Brown told Energy Voice during an interview in March, months after the project reached a final investment decision: “I wouldn’t say it’s not something we look at, but at the moment… the proposal is that the waste material will just stay on site. “It’s going to take a while to work out where in the country we’re able to drop the stuff into the ground, if ever.” Professor Andrew Blowers, co-chair of the NWS/NGO Exchange and former member of Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee, said: “The new build programme is costly, risky with long timescales and makes little sense as a part of the energy mix needed to achieve net zero. “Far from helping to deal with climate change, the wastes from such a programme will add yet more calamity to future generations.” NDA subsidiary National Waste Services (NWS), created in 2022 to handle the UK’s “future radioactive waste”, has submitted a decision to the energy secretary on where to locate a high-grade nuclear waste burial site, a spokeswoman said. The energy secretary must now formally respond to its proposal. However, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) told Energy Voice that NWS needs to “find a suitable site and a willing community” to host nuclear waste. It said:
“No site has yet been identified.” Of five potential sites, three were ruled out, including the coastal region of Seascale, a site near Sellafield in Cumbria, and another in Lincolnshire, where the county council voted unanimously to withdraw from the plans. “Three other communities have previously been involved in the process but are no longer,” the ONR said in a statement to Energy Voice. “Allerdale in Cumbria was withdrawn due to insufficient suitable geology. Theddlethorpe (Lincolnshire) and South Holderness (Yorkshire) voluntarily withdrew from the process.” Blowers said, “At present a GDF is uncertain, its location unclear and its timescale already far into the later part of this century. It is irresponsible and immoral to create yet more wastes arising in the next century for which no management provision can conceivably be made.”
“The mad rush to building yet more dangerous nuclear power stations with their eternal dangerous radioactive debris should be stopped dead in its tracks now,” Blowers said.

Energy Voice 17th Aug 2026

https://www.energyvoice.com/renewables-energy-transition/nuclear/602330/uk-nuclear-waste-management-problem/