Government moots ‘flexible approach’ to nuclear cleanup

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is consulting on a proposal to change the way it regulates the final stages of decommissioning and cleaning up nuclear sites.

A discussion paper, published on 3 November, says that the UK government has identified an opportunity to improve the regulation of the final stages of nuclear cleanups. Its proposal is to enable “a more flexible approach to site clean-up that takes account of a range of possible site end states and opportunities to optimise waste management”.

This could include removing a requirement to remove low levels of radioactive contamination from the ground, “if leaving it in situ is demonstrated to be the optimal solution,” the paper says.