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The civil nuclear roadmap provides a pathway for the different nuclear technologies and the government’s vision for the nuclear sector's future.

The UK led the world becoming the first country to split the atom. This was followed in 1956 by the world's first civil nuclear programme and a nuclear power station at Calder Hall, Windscale. At its peak in the mid-1990s, the UK generated approximately 13GW of power from nuclear energy, but this has slipped to only around 6GW today. This stands in stark contrast to our modern understanding of nuclear power as the only current form of reliable, secure, low carbon electricity which can be deployed at scale in the UK and as a key component in the drive for net zero. Accordingly, the government has taken the decision to reverse decades of under-investment and to recover the UK's global leadership in civil nuclear.

This Roadmap sets out the pathway to a UK resurgence in civil nuclear, covering both the long-term strategy and the near-term enabling policies we are pursuing. The aim is to demonstrate how nuclear power can and will contribute to the government's push to reach net zero by 2050 and, in so doing, to strengthen the UK's energy security. There is no credible pathway to net zero nor energy security without nuclear power and now is the time to act.

The purpose of this Roadmap is to send an unambiguous signal to the nuclear sector and investors, setting out how we expect UK nuclear deployment to happen, a timeline for the key decisions and actions, and clarity over the role government and industry should play in supporting and enabling this delivery. The challenges of net zero by 2050 and energy security demand urgent action, and the UK government stands ready to act.

From UK Government Page - HTML and Welsh Version available here.

The report identifies key strengths, opportunities, issues and, most importantly, actionable interventions that could see the sector thrive as it faces the challenges thrown up by climate change, and the goals of ensuring energy security, reaching net zero and delivering economic growth.

The IOP commissioned the expertise of its membership to provide robust scientific evidence on priority technology advancements for nuclear and renewable energy generation (nuclear power, photovoltaics), energy storage (batteries) and transmission (high-temperature superconductors).

The Faraday Institution was pleased to contribute to the section on battery energy storage via the expertise of Martin Freer and Stephen Gifford.

The report comes to conclusions in key areas, such as R&D, research and scale-up infrastructure, skills development, and recycling and sustainability, outlining the following top priorities.