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In the White Paper on Nuclear Power, published in January 2008, the Government confirmed that it would carry out a Strategic Siting Assessment to identify criteria that will be used to assess the suitability, at a strategic level, of appropriate sites nominated for new nuclear power stations. The Government has issued a consultation document on the Strategic Siting Process and Criteria. Alongside this, it is publishing and seeking views on a study (including appendices) of the environmental and sustainability effects of the Criteria. The Government is seeking views from members of the public, industry, non-Governmental organisations (NGOs) or any other organisation, body or individual with an interest on both the SSA Consultation and the accompanying environmental study. The Government has also published a Habitats Regulations Assessment Screening Report.
This draft document is issued to coincide with the Government’s Investors’ Conference on nuclear new build on 12 June 2008 to give an indication of the Government’s current thinking in relation to the proposed Strategic Siting Assessment (SSA). The details of the Strategic Siting Assessment are from a draft public consultation document which will be launched shortly after the Investors’ Conference. The details of the Strategic Siting Assessment process described in this document take account of work undertaken to date as part of the Strategic Environmental Assessment. The SSA details may change between 12 June and subsequent publication. In particular, they may change as we continue develop the SEA Environmental Report. We are not inviting comments on this draft document but will, of course, be inviting responses when the full consultation document is published shortly.
This statutory consultation was on the scope of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) for a proposed National Policy Statement (NPS) on planning for new nuclear power stations. It proposed how the SEA will be undertaken, the level and type of information to be covered in the Environmental Report, and how the SEA will be integrated into the development of the proposed Nuclear NPS.
The consultation was intended to seek views from statutory consultees which are the Environment Agency, English Heritage, Natural England, the Department of the Environment (Northern Ireland), Scottish Ministers, Historic Scotland, Scottish Natural Heritage, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the Welsh Assembly Government, Cadw, Countryside Council for Wales and the Environment Agency Wales.
We also consulted the Department of Health, the Health Protection Agency, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, Defra and the Industrial and Radiochemical Inspectorate (Northern Ireland) because of their roles in relation to the regulation of nuclear facilities. This was not a public consultation but we will consider any comments from other persons or organisations submitted before the consultation closed on 21 April 2008.
The consultation document, published on 13 March 2008, consists of the following parts. Please note, some of the file sizes for the maps are large and may take longer than usual to download:
(538KB)