In recent years, increasing scrutiny has fallen on the British state’s institutional capacity and the need to rebuild an effective civil service. That same attention should now be applied to nuclear governance. Following years of institutional decline and subsequent underinvestment, political and popular support for nuclear energy and the deterrent have returned with new momentum. The Government has placed nuclear at the heart of its defence and energy agenda, pledged meaningful reform following the Fingleton Review, and committed substantial capital to new build – this has created a substantial opportunity. The issue now is no longer whether Britain wants a nuclear future, but whether the state can deliver it. 

Building on Realising the Fingleton Review, this report forms part of the Policy Exchange Nuclear Enterprise Commission’s broader examination of the reforms needed to create a more coherent and effective nuclear enterprise.

The UK’s nuclear state is too prone to deferral instead of decision. Its core problem is not a lack of political support, but a governance structure that allows responsibility to be diffused, difficult decisions to be postponed and momentum to dissipate. The result is drift, deprioritisation and subsequently underfunding and underperformance. In civil nuclear, responsibility is spread between numerous organisations with no single actor consistently integrating policy and delivery across the whole system. Defence nuclear is more coherent, but it too contains important coordination problems. A further weakness lies in the limited alignment between the civil and defence sides of the enterprise, despite drawing on many of the same national capabilities. Across both spheres, the underlying problem is the same: where no institution can impose priorities and sustain focus, nuclear slips down the agenda and the capabilities on which it depends begin to weaken.

The Nuclear State, therefore, recommends a portfolio of possible institutional reforms intended to hardwire prioritisation and continuity into the system, supporting a more disciplined and strategically coherent approach to nuclear governance. Chief amongst these are anti-drift mechanisms to ensure that delay no longer becomes the default response to complexity, an empowered Nuclear Regulatory Implementation Panel to drive regulatory reform and delivery, and the creation of a Civil Nuclear Enterprise to provide the civil system with a clearer strategic centre. They also include more deliberate management of internal boundaries within the Defence Nuclear Enterprise and, in due course, a formal civil-defence alignment framework to manage shared national capabilities more effectively. 

If Britain gets nuclear governance right, it can finally turn nuclear ambition into a durable national capability; get it wrong, and today’s momentum will dissolve into another generation of drift, delay and decline. 

The launch of this report was covered by:

• POLITICO’s London Playbook

Policy Exchange Nuclear Enterprise Commission

As the UK enters a decisive decade for its energy and economic future, the Policy Exchange Nuclear Enterprise Commission will continue to set out the bold, practical reforms required to rebuild a world-class nuclear enterprise, cut through the inertia of the past two decades, and deliver the nuclear renaissance Britain urgently needs.

The Commission will produce a series of discussion papers and research notes addressing the most pressing questions facing the UK’s nuclear enterprise. Drawing together expertise from across government, industry and academia, its research and events will span subjects from the nuclear deterrent and the nuclear threat landscape to regulation, the nuclear industrial base and dual-use technologies. This breadth will enable the Commission to propose in a final publication a wide array of answers to the considerable challenges at the heart of energy and national security policy.

It should be noted that all research papers produced under the banner of the Policy Exchange Nuclear Enterprise Commission are intended for discussion and do not necessarily represent the views of every member of the Commission, or the Commission as a whole.

Members of the Commission

• Rt Hon Lord Case CVO PC, former Cabinet Secretary (Chair)
• Dr Won-Pil Baek, Senior Research Fellow at Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute
• Professor Wyn Bowen, Head of the School of Security Studies at KCL and Professor of Non-Proliferation and International Security
• Joshua Buckland, Director of Strategy and Policy at EDF and a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange
• Tom Greatrex, CEO, Nuclear Industry Association; former Shadow Minister for Energy of Great Britain
• Lt Gen H R McMaster (USA, Ret.), 25th U.S. National Security Advisor
• Frank Miller, former Special Advisor on nuclear matters to President George W. Bush and Nuclear Defence Specialist at the Department of Defence
• Professor Dame Fiona Murray DCMG CBE, Associate Dean for Innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of the NATO Innovation Fund
• Professor Sir David Omand GCB, former Director of GCHQ 
• Rt Hon Lord Robertson of Port Ellen KT GCMG PC, former NATO Secretary General and Secretary of State for Defence
• Hon William J Schneider Jr, former Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs
• Air Marshal Edward Stringer CB CBE, former Director-General of the Defence Academy and former Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff 
• Paul Taylor CBE, former Director General of Strategic Technologies at the Ministry of Defence
• Rt Hon Anne-Marie Trevelyan, former Minister of State for Indo-Pacific and Secretary of State for International Trade
• Dr Heather Williams, Director, Project on Nuclear Issues at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies
• Admiral Rt Hon Lord West of Spithead GCB DSC PC, former First Sea Lord