Why a no-deal Brexit holds no fears for the nuclear industry

The other, forgotten Brexit is going remarkably well. Preparations for “Brexatom” are a model of national focus and efficiency. We can be fairly confident that Britain’s nuclear industry and power plants will not face the cliff edge, even if there is no deal.

The Government’s “technical notification” on civil nuclear regulation – released in the avalanche of doomsday scenarios – is almost reassuring.

A year ago, experts were alarmed over what would happen when Britain left the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), our superregulator. It manages all nuclear materials in the EU, carries out inspections, and oversees all supply.

The UK ceded control to Euratom when it joined the EU, just as it ceded treaty control over trade deals to the Commission. Many feared Britain would be thrown into legal limbo, with no treaty access to nuclear fuel for reactors, endangering a fifth of our power generation. It would be outside the international safeguards regime that makes nuclear business possible.

They fretted that Britain’s 65,000 hi-tech, well-paid jobs in the nuclear supply-chain – such as the centrifuge and uranium enrichment operations in Chester – might spiral into crisis.

Some thought it might take years to negotiate 18 fresh treaties with other nuclear states, and that we would be held hostage to political demands.

Yet one by one the obstacles are falling away. The UK Nuclear Industry Association, in despair just months ago, says the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has moved with impressive speed, beefing up its Brexatom nuclear team to 45 staff. “We are an oasis of calm,” said Peter Haslam, NIA policy chief.

“There are still a lot of details to work out, and there is not much time left. We don’t know what is going to happen on import and export licensing. But BEIS has been taking this very seriously, and we’re broadly on the same page now,” he said.

Urenco’s Brexit working group – an Anglo-dutch-german cast – said it is broadly satisfied. “We acknowledge the progress made by the UK. We have

‘Brexatom parts of the negotiation have been pretty much agreed by both sides in terms of a negotiated final deal’

a detailed plan in place. With two sites in mainland Europe, one in the UK and one in the US, we will be able to continue offering security of supply to our customers from inside and outside of the EU,” it said.

Britain has restored its sovereign accreditation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world regulator in Vienna. The IAEA will take over oversight and inspections from Euratom. The country has already signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with the US, securing Atlantic trade in fissile materials. It is in close talks with three other key players that require such gold-standard accords: Japan, Canada, and Australia.

Some Brexiteers might look wistfully at this and ask whether it might not have been better to have reclaimed our schedules at the World Trade Organisation from the outset in the same way, teeing up comparable trade accords with the US and others rather than clinging to de facto membership of the EU single market and customs union. That would have increased the UK’S bargaining position in pushing for a Canada-plus trade deal.

By March, Britain will have replicated most of the arrangements needed to replace Euratom whatever happens to Brexit. The deals will kick in from Day One. There will be no rollover crisis. “This will ensure civil nuclear trade continues unimpeded,” said the technical notification.

The relevant laws have been passed, enabling the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation to take over in harness with the IAEA in March. Staff have been hired. The ONR says it can cope even if talks with the EU break down totally.

Dame Sue Ion, former chief of the Nuclear Innovation and Research Advisory Board, feared a disastrous nuclear rupture a year ago. Today she is sanguine. British and EU specialists have been working to avert disruption. “The Brexatom parts of the negotiation have been pretty much agreed by both sides in terms of a final deal,” she said.

The industry still faces “business risks” over licensing and contracts. Nuclear trade could still be caught up in any general chaos at the ports. There could still be damage to joint research, hitting the nuclear fusion operations at Culham. Yet Dame Sue said key partners in Europe see the UK as a crucial player in fission and fusion research. She thinks much of the existing structure will survive even with a no-deal Brexit. “Our traditional collaborations with countries inside and outside the EU would continue – and new ones would be struck – whatever the Brexit outcome,” she said.

Newspaper headlines have honed in on the threat to medical isotopes used for a million scans, diagnoses and cancer treatments in British hospitals. These isotopes decay fast and cannot be stockpiled. More than 80per cent are imported, some from the US, South Africa, Australia and Russia, but most come over from Europe.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, of the British Medical Association, reacted with outrage this week to the technical notification. “To avoid chaos at the border, the Government is instructing suppliers to make arrangements to fly radioisotopes and medicines with a short shelf-life into the UK – no one voted for this,” he said.

“It is clear to the BMA Brexit will have a catastrophic impact for patients, the health workforce, services and the nation’s health.”

This sort of language is clearly straying into politics. One expert in the nuclear industry said such alarmism over medical isotopes and nuclear fuel supplies is “just winding people up”. It is not vastly more expensive to fly in isotopes. “Everything is possible. Everything is achievable,” Dr John Buscombe, president of the British Nuclear Medicine Society, told the House of Lords.

There is near universal agreement that Euratom is one of the successes of the EU extended family (though technically separate). No one wants to leave it. But the EU’S legal services says Brexatom is obligatory since the agency is woven into the EU treaties.

Britain instead seeks an intimate nuclear co-operation agreement with Euratom that preserves the core of the relationship. Players on the EU side are keen to reciprocate. The UK is not a minor adjunct in this field but a central pillar of the Euratom structure, the only big EU state building nuclear reactors (Italy has none and Germany is winding down) and is a nuclear power.

It comes down to Franco-british co-operation, much as in defence, where we are also the two lead players. It would take an act of strategic vandalism by Brussels to precipitate a nuclear showdown with Britain. The French would not permit it in any case.

So yes, there is much to worry about in a no-deal scenario, but thankfully we can strike the nuclear industry and power security off the apocalypse list.