Britain Plots Atomic Reboot As Datacenter Demand Surges (theregister.com)
- Reference: 0180210297
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/11/25/231251/britain-plots-atomic-reboot-as-datacenter-demand-surges
- Source link: https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/25/uk_nuclear_power_reform/
> The document outlines 47 recommendations for the government, which come under five general areas: providing clearer leadership and direction for the nuclear sector; simplifying the regulatory approval process for atomic projects; reducing risk aversion; addressing incentives to delay progress; and working with the nuclear sector to speed delivery and boost innovation. Among the recommendations is that a Commission for Nuclear Regulation should be established, becoming a "unified decision maker" across all other regulators, planners, and approval bodies. The report also talks of reforming environmental and planning regimes to speed approvals, echoing the government's earlier decisions to streamline the planning process to make it easier for datacenter projects to get built.
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> It recommends amending the cost cap for judicial reviews and limiting legal challenges to Nationally Strategic Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs), while indemnifying nuclear developers against any damages they might incur as a result of proceeding with their project while a judicial review is still being decided. Another recommendation that may be cause for concern is that the government should modify the Habitats Regulations to reduce costs. These are rules created to protect the most important and vulnerable natural sites and wildlife species across the UK. The report also states that radiation limits for workers are overly conservative and well below what could be appropriately considered "broadly acceptable," claiming that they are many times less than what the average person in the UK normally receives in a year.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/25/uk_nuclear_power_reform/
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nuclear-regulatory-taskforce
Raise the costs even more! (Score:2)
Great, already the most expensive electricity and now they want to push that even higher. And for what? LLMs that are far from living up to expectations and in an over stretched bubble that'll going to burst long before any of these projects can ever come to fruition.
Need an external enemy (Score:2)
Elected officials in particular need some large external (to government policy or outside the government) trend, organization, company, threat, or more to endlessly debate about, form study groups and issue government reports on, and campaign for or against.
It's to justify the noise and attention seeking behavior of elected officials to secure reliable voting blocs and get reelected.
A larger guess is that since everyone uses electricity and water, including the millions of people who do not contribute to GD
Re: (Score:2)
They'll need something to keep the lights on during a dunkelflaute. Oh, wait; with Millibrain's wisdom, all the subjects can just sit in the dark when the renewables crash and take the entire country's grid with it -- it's the AI datacenters that are important enough to get continuous power.
Could the AI bubble do something good? (Score:2)
If this stupid-ass AI bubble makes governments rush to add lots of nuclear power capacity which will soon have no AI data center to feed, maybe something good could accidentally come from it?
Re: (Score:2)
We'll have an abundance of cheap energy once the bubble bursts or GPU get 10x more energy efficient.
News at 11, government agency needs importance (Score:2)
It's always odd how the agency, task force, blue ribbon commission, head of policy are X, ... in the government issues a statement or report that the general public would benefit from more of whatever its regulates or reports on.