​Leaving Euratom – where are we now?

With Brexit appearing to be both closer and further away on the horizon, now is a good time to reflect on the UK’s plans to leave the Euratom Treaty at the end of March 2019.

While progress has been made establishing the UK’s new regulator for nuclear safeguards, the organisation that will be responsible for the UK State System of Accountancy for and Control of Nuclear Material (SSAC), there remains considerable uncertainty over the outlook for the industry.

The government’s Brexit White Paper released earlier this month identified six points needed to be clarified for our future civil nuclear relationship with the EU. However, only one of these has been achieved so far with just eight months to go until Brexit.

Will there be sufficient time to develop and implement the complex arrangements needed for the nuclear sector before the end of the transition period in December 2020?

The Institution of Mechanical Engineers released two separate documents last year outlining the challenges and opportunities of leaving Euratom and a framework for the future, the second of which is broadly the process that the UK Government is following.

The UK has for the past 45 years been covered by the activities of Euratom, particularly in terms of international recognition of Safeguards (the regulation of the movement and management of nuclear materials). This is the area that has received significant attention to ensure that the UK has a Safe System of Accountancy and Control to meet our non-proliferation of nuclear materials obligations and international requirements.

New powers to establish the UK safeguards regulator have been approved as part of the UK Safeguards Act 2018 and the Safeguards Regulations are out for consultation. The Government and Office for Nuclear Regulation have made impressive progress in setting up the regulator. This is good news for the UK civil nuclear industry.

Concerns exist regarding these new regulations and regulator as the new Office will need to be paid for and how that will happen is yet to be decided. If the industry has to pay, this would be a new situation for the UK nuclear industry and as you can imagine there is resistance to this option.

At this point it is important to draw attention to the two different parts of the Brexit negotiations, as the timeframe for these affect the way leaving Euratom is negotiated in parallel.

Firstly, there is the separation agreement setting out how we distance ourselves from the European Union and this states the UK will no longer be covered by the current Euratom treaty. Leaving the EU means we lose Safeguards, nuclear co-operation agreements with third countries, the single market for nuclear goods and services including export control arrangements, our shared nuclear research programmes including Horizon 2020, the JET and ITER fusion projects as well as all the other regulations in this Treaty.

 In addition to this we lose our high level of influence in the design, development, construction, management, decommissioning and waste management of civil nuclear activities across Europe.

Looking at the second part of the negotiations – what will our relationship with Europe look like after the March 2019 and Dec 2020 deadlines? This is where the progress of leaving Euratom becomes more complex and challenging. On the 12^th July 2018 the Government published its White Paper the Future Relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, this document laid out that the UK is seeking a comprehensive Nuclear Cooperation Agreement with the European Union containing the following:

1. establish a cooperation mechanism between the UK safeguards regulator (the Office for Nuclear Regulation) and Euratom, enabling activity such as technical information exchanges, joint studies and consultation on regulatory or legislative changes;
2. provide for UK association with the Euratom Research and Training Programme, as part of an ambitious science and innovation accord;
3. ensure continuity of contractual arrangements for the supply of nuclear material, either by allowing for existing nuclear supply contracts with the UK to remain valid after the UK’s exit, or by providing for their seamless re-approval prior to the UK’s exit;
4. minimise barriers and simplify export control arrangements in the trade and transfer of sensitive nuclear materials, equipment and technology between the UK and the Euratom Community;
5. provide for technical cooperation on nuclear safety including continued notification and information sharing arrangements on radiological events and monitoring, with the UK participating in EU systems such as the European Community Urgent Radiological Information Exchange (ECURIE) and the European Radiological Data Exchange Platform (EURDEP); and
6. continue UK cooperation and information-sharing with the European Observatory on the Supply of Medical Radioisotopes.

Of these six points, we know that to-date we have achieved only number 1.

For frictionless trade we need a trade agreement and licence control agreement for nuclear and this will likely be negotiated with other trade deals. This makes it very difficult to know if the UK nuclear industry will be able to access the goods, service and people they need, at a reasonable cost, to continue a highly skilled industry that provides 20% of our electricity, all of which is low carbon. When this is finalised is largely unknown and the political climate in the UK is not making this process any clearer.

The next part of this is the question of what relationship our universities and industries will have with the European nuclear research programmes and what will this cost? Much hope has been pinned on an Association with Euratom for the purposes of research and development. This sounds like it should be straightforward, but as recently pointed out one key difference between the UK and other countries seeking an Association with Euratom is that they are seeking to be closer to Europe whereas we are seeking to be further away, making our future relationship with Europe far more nuanced.

Cutting a long and complicated story short, what this means is that there is still substantial uncertainty for the UK nuclear industry where trade in goods and services, research and development is concerned. We must keep pushing for clarity and that the trade deal for nuclear is at the front of the queue when it comes to our future relationship.

Brexit looms over the industry and the UK. As nation with a long history of nuclear innovation, involvement in the EU electricity, energy and climate programmes, we must now come to terms with the fact that we are about to lose our influence, connections and opportunity. This is not a place I ever expected the UK to be.