On the 7th April 2020, Boris Johnson announced that Nuclear Power - something that most people thought had died a quiet death - was going to be an important element in achieving a secure electricity supply, meeting the country's energy needs in the future and reaching climate change agreement CO2 levels. Risi Sunak's Government were intent on following the same path and the new Labour government seems just as wedded to nuclear power expansion.

While we believe that this target of 25% electricity generated by nuclear power is disingenuous - just a quick and unaccountable way of magicking future carbon reduction targets out of thin air - we nevertheless feel it important that the British public are made aware of why such a policy is dangerous and unachievable and will hold back the development of renewable energy sources and storage. In fact, Ed Milliband, the new Secretary of State for Energy, while in opposition in 2022, said that developing nuclear power was a mistake and would  hold back the development of renewables; which makes his change of mind both perplexing and disappointing.

That is why STAND, who began as SCAR - Severnside Campaign Against Radiation - back in the 1980s, has become active again to counter the misinformation and lies of the Nuclear industry. Our website has been revived and brought up to date to make sure the British public are fully aware of the real facts behind nuclear power. However, the majority of our earlier research is still valid and can be seen on our Archives page and makes fascinating - and at times mind boggling - reading.

In this age of dis-information and social media trolling we believe it is important to provide only evidence based material, which is why we quote our sources wherever we can, and why we encourage any one who believes that we have got something factually wrong to let us know.

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The following is taken from the Daily Telegraph of 13th March 2026

Keir Starmer is facing down green campaigners as he prepares to rip up the rule book on nuclear regulation and accelerate the construction of new power stations. The Prime Minister has ordered a “rewiring” of Britain’s nuclear safety and planning system, removing the rules and organisations that have prevented the UK from completing a single nuclear reactor since 1995. Sir Keir said an expanded nuclear industry was “simply indispensable” for the UK’s strategic energy independence, national security and the climate. Under the changes, the civil nuclear energy programmes will be linked to defence. This will include merging the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) with the Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator (DNSR) by 2028. The overhaul will also make it far easier for the nuclear industry to win planning consent for new power stations or other projects – and harder for environmental groups and other protesters to block them. Nuclear projects will, for example, no longer be obliged to carry out consultations before seeking planning consent.

And then there's the deal that Keir Starmer has done with Donald Trump to allow the US to build their own designs of nuclear power stations in the UK, to US safety standards - safety standards that Trump recently told the Nuclear Regulation Authorities must be considerably relaxed to make new nuclear build quicker and cheaper.

STAND believes that this is unbelievably dangerous. The rules and regulations that have evolved over the years are designed to ensure that nuclear installations are as safe as possible. To weaken those regulations is supreme folly and has many nuclear experts aghast. (By the way, the reason that no nuclear power stations have been completed in the UK since 1995 has nothing whatsoever to do with regulations, but the sheer complexity and expense of building this outdated and dangerous way of boiling water).

STAND and the re-ignited group Sheppardine Against Nuclear Expansion, SANE, will continue to fight against any future nuclear development at Oldbury. The first tranche of SMRs may have gone to Wylfa in North Wales but Steven Bray of Great British Energy-Nuclear made clear in a statement recently that exploratory work at Oldbury-on-Severn will begin in a few months. We may have won the first battle, but there is a long haul ahead.

Watch this space!

STAND have long argued that of all the infrastructure that we have in the UK, nuclear power stations are the most vulnerable to terrorist attack. The drones that Iran are currently firing on their Middle East neighbours and on Israel are ubiquitous. They are easily and cheaply manufactured and can be easily transported without detection. They are sold around the world.

An attack by just one drone on a nuclear power station will at best disable it, leaving large parts of the country without Electricity for a considerable time. At worst it could act like a "dirty" bomb and spread radiation far and wide. Now that we know how easy it is for terrorists to get hold of these weapons, and now that we know Iran can launch missiles as far as Diego Garcia or the UK, to build such a vulnerable and dangerous infrastructure would be an act of supreme irresponsibility.

The government announced on the 13th Novemebr 2025 that the first tranche of SMRs would be built by Rolls Royce at Wylfa on the Island of Anglesey, North Wales. They say that they hope to have the new SMRs producing Electricity by the "mid 2030s”. 

This is sad news for the people who live and holiday on the beautiful island of Anglesey where Rolls Royce will build the first Small Modular Reactors. And at least 10 years before any Electricity is being produced? This does not seem like "oven ready off the shelf” nuclear power to us!

Stephen Bray , Regional Communications and Stakeholder Manager of Great British Energy–Nuclear, said recently of the Oldbury site:

"The site [Oldbury] remains under the ownership of GBE-N, and we’ll continue to work on it to prepare it for future projects, regardless of the announcement tomorrow. For example, we’ll be constructing a site compound, and subject to planning consent from the local authority, we’ll be starting the ground investigation works in the new year. It’s probably important to say that the intention has always been for there to be a fleet of SMRs built across multiple sites, and it’s possible that a project for further SMRs project or any other advanced nuclear energy technology [STYANDs italics] could come forward for Oldbury, if it isn't chosen tomorrow.”

In the summer of 2025, Keir Starmer did a deal with Donald Trump to allow the US to build their own designs of nuclear power stations in the UK, to US safety standards - safety standards that Trump recently told the US Nuclear Regulation Authorities must be considerably relaxed to make new nuclear build quicker and cheaper. As the first tranche of New Nuclear build in this country has gone to Rolls-Royce's elusive SMRs, to be built at WYLFA in North Wales, STAND has cause to believe that makes it a dead cert for the American company Westinghouse to build a large nuclear power station at Oldbury on Severn.

The Lydney community centre’s main hall was packed on the evening of Friday 17 October for a public meeting called by STAND to make people aware of the governments plans to build three or four nuclear power stations just a few miles across the river Severn from the Forest of Dean.

The headline speakers were Jonathon Porritt, the well-known sustainability and human rights campaigner, and Dr David Toke a highly respected energy researcher.

members of STAND’s steering committee, began the meeting by explaining how STAND, previously SCAR (Severnside Campaign Against Radiation) started over 40 years ago due to concerns over radiation induced childhood leukaemias which had been found in the area, and why the Government's new proposals for Rolls-Royce to build new nuclear reactors at Oldbury on Severn, just 5 miles away from the Forest of Dean, would be dangerous and unaffordable, especially given new evidence that the site would certainly be inundated sometime this century by devastating floods.

David Toke then said that wind power was now producing more electricity than nuclear globally and in the UK, and that solar power was gaining even faster. David is Senior Lecturer in Energy Policy in the Departments of Sociology and POLSIS at University of Birmingham and he joined the University of Aberdeen in April 2013. He is a prolific writer on Energy matters and publishes information and reports, and campaigns in favour of renewable energy. He said:

“The only reason that SMRs [small model reactors] are being dreamed up is to con the public there is something new. They would use old technology and would be a lot worse in financial terms because they would lose the economy of scale that larger reactors provided and would create even more high-level Radioactive Nuclear Waste."

Jonathon Porritt, the keynote note speaker, and well known sustainability and human rights campaigner, said:

“The challenges we face now are low carbon, energy security, and affordability. And for the avoidance of doubt, if anybody thinks Nuclear Power can put a tick into any of these three boxes, you really need to do your homework.”

By way of pointing out how much money Nuclear Power diminished the amount of financing available to renewables, he said that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, in its 2024 to 2025 financial statement, said the total amount of money spent in that financial year was £6.7 billion. Of that money the NDA (Nuclear Decommissioning Agency), took £3 billion, the planning for Sizewell C took £1.7 billion, leaving only £2 billion for affordable energy, energy efficiency, renewable storage, grid upgrades, etc, etc. He said:

“You're left with £2 billion to do the rest, to do everything! It’s utterly staggering”

A lively question and answer session followed. One questioner asked why, if nuclear power was so dangerous and expensive was the government even contemplating it. John French replied that, while lobbying by the Nuclear Industry, who were keen to get their hands on the massive taxpayer subsidies available, was a large element, there was also the link with nuclear weapons. Right from the start he said nuclear power stations were designed mainly to produce enriched uranium and plutonium for nuclear warheads. Ever since the 1950s, he continued, such fissionable material had been produced for the UK's own nuclear weapons and for export to the USA. While denied for decades, it is now known that regular shipments of weapons grade material have been shipped to the USA and are still being shipped.

Many thanks to James Greenwood, for chairing the meeting so effectively

See a YouTube video of the highlights here

STAND is pleased to announce that we have been invited to join the BEIS nuclear NGO group, which has as its members Friends of the Earth, The Nuclear Free Authorities group, Stop Hinkley groups and others. 

We will be meeting regularly with Government Ministers in Whitehall to ask questions and put our points of view. 

A brilliantly researched paper by two of the groups members was presented on the 6th of December to Lord Hunt, the Minister for Nuclear Power. You can download this report here - a must-read for anyone interested in the future of energy production in this country...

It is Time to Expose the Great British Nuclear Fantasy Once And For All by Stephen Thomas and Andrew Blowers