NFLA endorses call for real green energy on former nuclear sites

Posted: 31st January 2022

NFLA media release, 31st January 2022, For immediate use

NFLA endorses call for real green energy on former nuclear sites

The Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) of the UK and Ireland has called for renewable technologies to be used to produce ‘real green energy’ on land formerly occupied by now decommissioned nuclear power plants.

The NFLA was pleased to see the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the agency charged with making safe and clearing closed civil nuclear plants, committing itself in its latest draft Business Plan to being a ‘net (carbon) zero’ business, but disheartened by the lack of detail. 

In its response to the consultation on the plan concluded today by the NDA, the NFLA hopes that ‘active consideration can be given to generating onsite power and heat to support decommissioning operations using renewable technologies.’ 

Councillor David Blackburn, Chair of the NFLA Steering Committee, said:

“We are surprised that the NDA has not picked up on the obvious. The land formerly occupied by nuclear power plants, whilst not being so attractive for residential, leisure or office developments, has great potential to be the location for solar farms, wind turbines and ‘green’ hydrogen. Or, where these plants are located by the sea, even to support offshore generation through being a support base for wind farms and tidal schemes. By their nature, nuclear plants are also linked to the electricity grid. Why not use their geographical situation and infrastructure for ‘real green’ energy generation?”

In its draft Business Plan, the NDA has indicated that the following land on each of these redundant power plant sites has now been ‘de-designated’ from nuclear use: Berkeley – 11 hectares; Harwell – 23 hectares; Oldbury – 32 hectares; Winfrith – 10 hectares; and Capenhurst – 17 hectares, but over the next decade all of the UK’s remaining outdated Advanced Gas Cooled reactors will be closed and decommissioning will begin, a process that will take over 100 years.

Councillor Blackburn added: “Clearly NDA operatives will be on-site for a long-time so an investment in micro-generation schemes, such as roof-mounted solar, a solar farm or wind turbines, would pay for itself many fold. Not only would the NDA reap the dividend of generating renewable power to support decommissioning operations, but it would also reduce the agency’s carbon footprint. And as 1,043 hectares is expected to be eventually freed up, there is no reason that the agency could not become a net exporter of renewable energy to the National Grid.”

In its response, the NFLA references a community-owned renewable energy provider which has a 915 KW solar farm on a 1.6 hectare site, and points out that the Oldbury ‘de-designated land’ is 32 hectares, enough to theoretically host twenty such schemes.

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For more information please contact: Richard Outram, Secretary, NFLA email [email protected]  / mobile 07583 097793