Category: General News

Sophie Davies is a passionate health, beauty, and lifestyle writer based in the south of the UK. Balancing her love for writing with raising her two children, Sophie brings a relatable, insightful perspective to her engaging articles.
  • The Slow Travel Revolution: Why Discerning Travellers Are Abandoning Packed Itineraries for Depth Over Distance

    The Slow Travel Revolution: Why Discerning Travellers Are Abandoning Packed Itineraries for Depth Over Distance

    There is a particular kind of exhaustion that only seasoned travellers recognise. The one that arrives not after a long journey, but after a meticulously scheduled one. Three cities in five days. A museum before breakfast, a flight before dinner. The photographs are extraordinary; the memories, oddly thin. Slow travel luxury 2026 has emerged as a direct and rather elegant rebuke to all of that.

    This is not a fringe movement. Among Britain’s more thoughtful, culturally literate travellers, the shift is palpable and, by most accounts, permanent. The question is no longer how many places you can fit into a fortnight, but how deeply you can inhabit one. Depth over distance, as the phrase goes, has become the defining principle of a new kind of luxury.

    A traveller contemplating the Alentejo landscape, embodying the slow travel luxury 2026 philosophy
    A traveller contemplating the Alentejo landscape, embodying the slow travel luxury 2026 philosophy

    What Is the Slow Travel Philosophy, and Why Is It Resonating Now?

    Slow travel, at its core, borrows from the broader slow movement that emerged from Carlo Petrini’s Slow Food manifesto in late-1980s Italy. Applied to travel, it advocates staying longer in fewer places, engaging with local rhythms rather than tourist schedules, and measuring the success of a trip by what you understand at the end of it rather than what you have ticked off. Whilst the concept has circulated in travel writing for over a decade, something shifted meaningfully in 2025 and 2026 to push it from pleasant idea to genuine cultural force.

    Part of the answer is post-pandemic recalibration. British travellers who spent enforced periods at home rediscovered the pleasure of noticing things slowly, paying attention to what is immediately around them. Part of it is environmental consciousness; staying in one place for two weeks produces a fraction of the carbon footprint that a multi-destination tour generates. And part of it is, frankly, the luxury market doing what it always eventually does: following genuine desire rather than manufactured aspiration. High-net-worth travellers, the kind who once collected Michelin-starred restaurants across four countries in a single trip, are increasingly choosing a single villa in the Alentejo for ten nights, with a private guide and a reading list curated by a local academic.

    The Destinations Leading the Slow Travel Movement in 2026

    Not every place lends itself to the slow travel ideal. The best destinations share certain qualities: genuine local culture that rewards attention, landscapes that change with the light, food that is tied to place rather than trend, and enough quiet that you can hear yourself think.

    Portugal’s Alentejo region remains, by most measures, the spiritual home of slow travel luxury in 2026. Its cork forests, medieval hilltop towns and sparse, amber-lit plains feel designed for contemplation. Properties such as Herdade do Esporão have developed extended-stay programmes centred on viticulture, agricultural heritage and serious gastronomy. You arrive expecting a holiday and leave with something closer to an education.

    Japan’s Tohoku region, long overshadowed by Kyoto and Tokyo on the standard itinerary, has attracted substantial attention from discerning travellers seeking the country’s quieter self. Ryokan stays of a week or longer, centred on particular craft traditions such as Aizu lacquerware or Tsugaru shamisen music, have become genuinely sought-after experiences. The point is not observation but participation.

    Handcrafted ceramics and local produce reflecting the slow travel luxury 2026 attention to detail
    Handcrafted ceramics and local produce reflecting the slow travel luxury 2026 attention to detail

    Closer to home, Scotland’s far north has quietly become a destination of remarkable depth for slow travellers. The Orkney archipelago, in particular, offers something almost nowhere else can: a landscape that contains 5,000 years of human history, severe and luminous weather, and a local community of artists, farmers and archaeologists whose work is inseparable from the terrain. Several independent properties now offer week-long residencies built around the islands’ creative and academic communities. The scenery is, of course, spectacular. But scenery alone does not sustain a slow traveller; context does.

    Why Slow Travel and Luxury Are, in Fact, Natural Partners

    There is a common misconception that slow travel is austerity travel, that it means budget accommodation and a deliberate rejection of comfort. The opposite tends to be true at the upper end of the market. True slow travel luxury in 2026 is expensive precisely because it requires extraordinary quality at every point of sustained contact. One spectacular dinner is a treat; ten consecutive brilliant meals require a chef, a network of local producers and genuine culinary intelligence. One beautiful bedroom is easy to find; a space you can genuinely live in for a fortnight demands curation of an entirely different order.

    The most sophisticated slow travel operators understand this. Scott Dunn, the British luxury travel specialist, has reported significant growth in extended single-destination bookings over the past eighteen months, with clients increasingly requesting programmes that include private tutors, local mentors and curated cultural immersions rather than conventional excursions. The measure of success has shifted from novelty to understanding.

    This also represents a meaningful redefinition of exclusivity. In a world where most wealthy travellers have been everywhere, having been nowhere thoroughly is, perversely, the more distinguished position. To have spent three weeks in one Umbrian valley, to know the name of the farmer who produces your olive oil and the history of the church you walked past each morning, is a form of knowledge that no amount of itinerary-hopping can replicate.

    The Environmental Case, Which Is Impossible to Ignore

    Slow travel is not an environmental panacea, and it would be intellectually dishonest to pretend otherwise. Flying to Portugal and staying for three weeks still involves a flight to Portugal. But the arithmetic is notably better than flying to five destinations across a fortnight, and the emerging class of slow travellers is increasingly supplementing or replacing flights with long-distance rail journeys. The BBC’s science and environment coverage has consistently noted that aviation accounts for roughly 2.5 per cent of global CO2 emissions but a far higher share of effective climate warming when contrasted effects are included. Reducing flight frequency matters, even when total travel remains high.

    The overland renaissance is a significant subplot of the slow travel story. The Caledonian Sleeper from London to Inverness, the Venice Simplon-Orient Express, and a growing number of premium rail routes across Europe have attracted travellers who once would have flown without a second thought. The journey, in the slow travel model, is not an inconvenience to be minimised but a first act of the experience itself.

    How to Actually Do Slow Travel Well

    The practical barriers are real. Most Britons receive between 25 and 28 days of annual leave; a fortnight in one place feels extravagant to many. But slow travel need not mean extended sabbaticals. A long weekend in one Yorkshire village, properly engaged with, produces more lasting memory than four European capitals in a week. The philosophy scales.

    For those planning a genuine immersive trip, the principles are straightforward. Arrive without a checklist. Identify two or three things you genuinely want to understand, whether that is the local textile tradition, a regional cooking technique, or the history of a particular landscape, and build your time around those. Stay somewhere that feels like habitation rather than accommodation. Eat with the rhythm of local life. Walk more than you think necessary. Resist the hotel’s activity programme unless it genuinely interests you.

    The slow travel movement, at its best, is simply an argument for taking seriously the places we choose to visit. It asks travellers to bring their full attention rather than their best luggage. In a world that accelerates almost everything by default, that particular kind of deliberateness feels, unexpectedly, like the most radical luxury of all.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What does slow travel actually mean in practice?

    Slow travel means staying in fewer destinations for longer periods, prioritising genuine engagement with local culture, food and landscape over ticking off attractions. Rather than visiting five countries in a fortnight, a slow traveller might spend ten days in a single region, building real knowledge of the place rather than a curated highlight reel.

    Is slow travel luxury more expensive than conventional luxury holidays?

    Extended stays of genuine quality tend to cost more in absolute terms, simply because high standards must be maintained over a longer period. However, per-day costs can be lower, and many travellers find the value proposition far superior, as the depth of experience is incomparably richer than a succession of brief, expensive stops.

    Which are the best slow travel destinations for British travellers in 2026?

    Portugal’s Alentejo, Japan’s Tohoku region and Scotland’s Orkney archipelago are among the most compelling options for culturally serious slow travellers this year. Each rewards extended attention with layers of history, food culture and landscape that a short visit cannot hope to reach.

    Is slow travel actually better for the environment?

    It is generally more environmentally efficient than multi-destination travel, as it reduces the total number of flights taken. Combining slow travel with overland rail options, such as the Caledonian Sleeper or European train routes, reduces the carbon impact further, though a transatlantic flight remains significant regardless of how long you stay.

    Can slow travel work with a standard British annual leave allowance?

    Absolutely. The principles of slow travel apply at any scale; a long weekend spent properly exploring one part of the English countryside is slow travel in spirit. For those planning longer trips, combining annual leave with bank holidays strategically can create ten to twelve day windows that work well for genuinely immersive experiences.

  • Quantum Computing Just Became Real: What Every Business Needs to Know in 2026

    Quantum Computing Just Became Real: What Every Business Needs to Know in 2026

    For years, quantum computing occupied the same intellectual territory as fusion energy and human teleportation: endlessly promising, perpetually distant, and deeply convenient to ignore. That era is over. The quantum computing business impact in 2026 is no longer a matter of projection — it is a matter of preparation, and a significant number of British and European enterprises are already behind.

    What changed? In short: hardware stabilised, error correction made meaningful progress, and the major commercial players stopped waiting for perfection before deploying. IBM, Google, and a cohort of well-funded European challengers including Oxford-based Quantum Motion have moved from demonstration to early commercial access. The question is no longer whether quantum advantage is real. It is whether your sector is about to feel it first.

    Quantum computing business impact 2026 — cryogenic quantum processor in a British research facility
    Quantum computing business impact 2026 — cryogenic quantum processor in a British research facility

    What Does “Quantum Advantage” Actually Mean in Practice?

    The term gets thrown around with remarkable looseness. Quantum advantage, in its proper sense, describes the point at which a quantum computer solves a specific, commercially relevant problem faster or more accurately than any classical computer could, at a cost that makes deployment worthwhile. Notice the specificity. Quantum machines are not general-purpose replacements for the servers humming in data centres across the country. They are extraordinary at certain categories of problem: optimisation, simulation, and factorisation. Everything else, for now, remains firmly in classical territory.

    That distinction matters enormously when you are trying to assess risk or opportunity for your organisation. The businesses that will extract early value are those operating in domains where those three problem types are central. The businesses that should be most alarmed are those whose security infrastructure depends on the difficulty of factorisation. Which brings us directly to cybersecurity.

    The Cybersecurity Time Bomb: Harvest Now, Decrypt Later

    Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has been direct about the threat. Adversaries are already harvesting encrypted data today, with the explicit intention of decrypting it once sufficiently powerful quantum machines become accessible. Government communications, financial records, medical histories, intellectual property: all of it potentially exposed to a retrospective breach that hasn’t technically happened yet but functionally already has.

    The NCSC’s guidance on post-quantum cryptography migration is not aspirational reading material for the future. It is an active operational priority. Organisations subject to UK regulatory frameworks, whether through the FCA, ICO, or sector-specific requirements, should treat their cryptographic estate as a live vulnerability. The migration to quantum-resistant algorithms is neither cheap nor swift; starting in 2026 is late, not early. You can read the NCSC’s post-quantum cryptography guidance directly at ncsc.gov.uk.

    Finance: Portfolio Optimisation and Risk Modelling at Unprecedented Scale

    The City has been watching quantum computing closely since at least 2019, and with good reason. Financial modelling is, at its core, an optimisation problem of extraordinary complexity. Pricing derivatives, stress-testing portfolios across thousands of correlated variables, detecting fraud patterns in real time — these tasks currently consume enormous classical computing resources and still return approximations rather than optima.

    Early quantum advantage in finance does not mean quantum computers replacing Bloomberg terminals next quarter. It means that within a narrow but high-value band of calculations, particularly Monte Carlo simulations and portfolio rebalancing at scale, hybrid quantum-classical systems are already demonstrating measurable improvements in speed and accuracy. HSBC and Barclays have both disclosed research partnerships in this space. For smaller asset managers and fintechs, the practical implication is that competitive edge will accrue to whoever integrates quantum-enhanced analytics first, even through cloud-based access rather than on-premises hardware.

    Quantum computing business impact on financial modelling and portfolio optimisation in 2026
    Quantum computing business impact on financial modelling and portfolio optimisation in 2026

    Pharmaceuticals: The Industry With the Most to Gain

    Arguably no sector stands to benefit more profoundly from genuine quantum computing business impact in 2026 and beyond than pharmaceuticals. Drug discovery is, fundamentally, a molecular simulation problem. Classical computers can model small molecules with reasonable accuracy, but the moment you move to the complex protein interactions relevant to most serious disease targets, the computational cost becomes prohibitive. Quantum computers simulate quantum systems natively — which is precisely what molecular chemistry is.

    AstraZeneca has publicly discussed quantum computing partnerships, and the wider UK life sciences sector, which contributes over £94 billion annually to the economy according to the Office for National Statistics, has strong strategic reasons to move quickly. A meaningful reduction in the time and cost of identifying viable drug candidates would be transformative. Early estimates suggest quantum-assisted drug discovery could compress certain phases of the development pipeline by years, not months. At a time when NHS procurement pressures and global health challenges demand faster therapeutic pipelines, the stakes are substantial.

    Logistics: The Optimisation Problem That Never Ends

    Supply chain optimisation is a domain where quantum advantage is already beginning to manifest in proof-of-concept work. Route planning, warehouse allocation, demand forecasting across complex multi-supplier networks: these are all variants of what mathematicians call the travelling salesman problem, notorious for its exponential classical complexity.

    For major British retailers and logistics operators — think the scale of Royal Mail, Tesco’s distribution network, or the Port of Felixstowe’s throughput management — even marginal improvements in routing efficiency translate into millions of pounds annually. Quantum optimisation is unlikely to replace classical logistics software wholesale, but as a supplementary layer applied to the hardest optimisation decisions, the value proposition is increasingly credible. Several UK logistics firms are already engaged in pilot programmes through IBM’s Quantum Network and similar platforms.

    What Should British Business Leaders Actually Do Right Now?

    The honest answer is: it depends entirely on your sector, your data sensitivity, and your competitive position. For most organisations, a two-track approach makes sense. The first track is defensive: audit your cryptographic infrastructure, begin understanding post-quantum migration requirements, and engage your IT security leadership on a realistic timeline for compliance. The second track is exploratory: identify the specific optimisation or simulation problems in your operations where quantum advantage might eventually apply, and begin building the internal literacy to evaluate vendor claims intelligently.

    Vendor claims, incidentally, deserve healthy scepticism. The gap between a press release announcing a quantum breakthrough and a deployable commercial solution remains wide in most cases. The organisations that will navigate this well are those that neither dismiss quantum as distant science fiction nor rush to expensive commitments based on hype. Informed, deliberate engagement is the appropriate posture.

    Britain’s Quantum Ambitions and the Stakes for UK Plc

    The UK government committed £2.5 billion to its National Quantum Strategy in 2023, with significant tranches being deployed through 2026 via Innovate UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Britain has genuine world-class capability in this field: the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Bristol rank amongst the leading quantum research institutions globally.

    Whether that academic excellence converts into commercial leadership is the defining question. The quantum computing business impact in 2026 is real, targeted, and accelerating. The industries most exposed to disruption and most positioned for advantage have been identified. The window for deliberate preparation, rather than reactive scrambling, is still open. Just not indefinitely.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What is quantum computing business impact in 2026 actually referring to?

    It refers to the practical, commercial effects of early quantum advantage becoming accessible to businesses across sectors including finance, pharmaceuticals, logistics, and cybersecurity. In 2026, this means hybrid quantum-classical systems delivering measurable improvements in specific high-complexity tasks, rather than wholesale replacement of existing computing infrastructure.

    Should UK businesses be worried about quantum computing breaking their encryption?

    Yes, with appropriate urgency rather than panic. The NCSC has issued guidance on post-quantum cryptography migration, acknowledging that adversaries may already be harvesting encrypted data for future decryption. Any UK organisation holding sensitive data under FCA, ICO, or similar regulatory frameworks should review their cryptographic estate now.

    How does quantum computing help the pharmaceutical industry?

    Quantum computers can simulate molecular interactions natively, which is precisely what drug discovery requires. This could dramatically reduce the time needed to identify viable drug candidates and accelerate clinical pipeline development, with major implications for UK life sciences, which contributes over £94 billion annually to the economy.

    Do businesses need to buy quantum hardware to benefit?

    Not at all. Cloud-based quantum access through platforms like IBM Quantum Network, Microsoft Azure Quantum, and others allows organisations to run quantum algorithms without any on-premises hardware investment. This significantly lowers the barrier to early experimentation and pilot deployment.

    How does quantum computing differ from regular high-performance computing?

    Classical high-performance computing scales up conventional binary processing, using more and faster traditional processors. Quantum computing uses qubits that exploit superposition and entanglement to process certain problem types, particularly optimisation, simulation, and factorisation, in fundamentally different and far more efficient ways than any classical approach can.

  • The Return of Nuclear Power: How a Once-Toxic Energy Source Became the World’s Most Debated Climate Solution

    The Return of Nuclear Power: How a Once-Toxic Energy Source Became the World’s Most Debated Climate Solution

    Thirty years ago, the very mention of nuclear energy in polite company was enough to clear a room. Chernobyl had done its damage. Three Mile Island lingered in the cultural memory. And then Fukushima, in 2011, seemed to seal the verdict for a generation of policymakers. Germany began shutting its reactors. Italy voted against nuclear twice. The narrative was settled: nuclear was the past, renewables were the future, and never the twain should meet.

    That narrative has, rather spectacularly, collapsed. Nuclear power as a climate solution is no longer a fringe position held by contrarian engineers. It is being championed by mainstream environmentalists, endorsed by energy ministers from Tokyo to Brussels, and, perhaps most tellingly, attracting serious private capital for the first time in decades. The question is no longer whether nuclear deserves a seat at the table. It is whether it can arrive quickly enough to matter.

    Aerial view of a British nuclear power station at dusk, relevant to nuclear power climate solution 2026
    Aerial view of a British nuclear power station at dusk, relevant to nuclear power climate solution 2026

    What Changed? The Forces Behind the Nuclear Comeback

    The rehabilitation of nuclear did not happen overnight, and it was not driven by a single catalyst. A confluence of pressures has pushed it back into serious consideration. The most obvious is the sheer scale of the decarbonisation challenge. The International Energy Agency has made clear that reaching net zero by 2050 requires every low-carbon technology available, and solar and wind, for all their extraordinary growth, cannot reliably provide baseload power without storage solutions that remain stubbornly expensive and limited in capacity.

    Then came the energy security crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. European nations that had cheerfully imported Russian gas suddenly found themselves scrambling. France, which had quietly maintained around 70 per cent nuclear electricity generation, looked prescient rather than reckless. Belgium reversed its nuclear phase-out. Japan restarted reactors it had shuttered after Fukushima. The geopolitical dimension of energy independence had reasserted itself with brutal clarity.

    In the UK, the government’s commitment to Great British Nuclear and the progress at Hinkley Point C, however painfully delayed and over budget, reflects a genuine political consensus that the country cannot meet its 2050 targets without atomic power in the mix. The Energy Act 2023 created new financing frameworks designed to attract private investment, acknowledging that the old model of wholly public-funded megaprojects is no longer viable.

    Small Modular Reactors: The Technology Everyone Is Watching

    The most consequential development in nuclear technology right now is not another vast, cathedral-scale plant like Hinkley. It is the emergence of Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs. These are factory-built units, typically generating between 50 and 300 megawatts of electricity, that can be assembled on site in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of conventional reactors.

    Rolls-Royce SMR, based in Derby, is arguably the most advanced programme in this country. The company has proposed building up to ten SMRs across the UK, with ambitions to export the technology globally. The projected cost per unit sits around £2.5 billion, against the £25 billion-plus price tag attached to Hinkley Point C. If those numbers hold, and that remains a significant if, SMRs represent a genuinely transformative proposition.

    Engineering model of a small modular reactor being examined, illustrating nuclear power climate solution 2026 technology
    Engineering model of a small modular reactor being examined, illustrating nuclear power climate solution 2026 technology

    Beyond cost, the appeal of SMRs lies in their flexibility. They can be located closer to industrial demand, potentially decarbonising heavy industry, hydrogen production, and district heating networks simultaneously. Several designs under development use advanced fuels and passive safety systems that make the catastrophic failure scenarios of older reactors essentially impossible. NuScale in the United States, Kairos Power, and a cluster of British and European start-ups are all racing to deliver commercial units within this decade.

    The UK Government’s Great British Nuclear programme has already shortlisted several SMR developers, with final investment decisions expected imminently. According to analysis published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, nuclear could supply up to 25 per cent of the UK’s electricity by 2050, with SMRs forming a significant portion of that capacity.

    Has Public Opinion Actually Shifted?

    For decades, public opinion on nuclear was a reliable obstacle. Planning inquiries became battlegrounds. Protests outside proposed sites were guaranteed. The emotional weight of the Cold War, of mushroom clouds and fallout shelters, had permanently contaminated the technology’s image even though commercial nuclear power and weapons are entirely different propositions.

    The shift in sentiment has been measurable. A YouGov poll conducted in early 2025 found that 58 per cent of UK adults now support new nuclear power stations, up from around 40 per cent a decade earlier. Younger respondents, more attuned to the existential urgency of climate change, showed the highest levels of support. The old anti-nuclear coalition has fractured, with a notable cohort of prominent environmentalists, including the writer George Monbiot and the filmmaker Robert Stone, publicly revising their positions.

    This is not universal. Community opposition to specific sites remains fierce, and the unresolved question of long-term waste storage continues to generate legitimate concern. No permanent geological disposal facility yet exists in the UK, though the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is progressing a siting process. Until that question is answered convincingly, it will remain ammunition for those who argue that nuclear power merely defers its problems rather than solving them.

    The Geopolitics of Nuclear in 2026

    The nuclear renaissance is not playing out in a vacuum. It has a distinct geopolitical character, and that character is increasingly defined by competition between Western democracies and authoritarian states, principally Russia and China, for influence over the global nuclear supply chain.

    Russia’s Rosatom remains the dominant builder of nuclear plants across the developing world, having signed agreements with countries from Egypt to Bangladesh. China’s state-owned enterprises are similarly aggressive in exporting reactor technology, often bundled with financing that creates long-term strategic dependencies. Western governments have belatedly recognised that ceding the nuclear market to these actors carries implications well beyond energy policy.

    There is also the question of uranium enrichment. The UK, along with most Western nations, remains dependent on Russian enriched uranium to a degree that post-Ukraine now looks uncomfortable. Diversifying the fuel supply chain, building domestic enrichment capacity, and investing in next-generation fuels such as high-assay low-enriched uranium are all now matters of national security as much as energy policy.

    The Honest Reckoning: What Nuclear Cannot Do

    Enthusiasm for nuclear power as a climate solution in 2026 must be tempered by a clear-eyed assessment of its limitations. Build times remain the central problem. Even with SMR optimism, no commercial unit will be generating power in the UK before the early 2030s at the most optimistic reading. The climate crisis does not accommodate that kind of lead time gracefully.

    Cost overruns are endemic to the industry. Hinkley Point C, Vogtle in the United States, Flamanville in France: every major nuclear project of the past two decades has delivered unpleasant financial surprises. The industry needs to demonstrate, convincingly and soon, that SMRs can be delivered on time and on budget at scale. That demonstration has not yet happened.

    None of this means nuclear should be abandoned. The most credible energy transition pathways involve a portfolio approach: rapid scaling of renewables, aggressive improvements in storage and grid infrastructure, demand reduction, and a sustained nuclear contribution providing the firm, dispatchable low-carbon power that no other technology currently replicates at meaningful scale. The era of treating nuclear as uniquely beyond the pale, separate from the rational cost-benefit analysis applied to every other technology, is over. Whether the industry can capitalise on its rehabilitation is another matter entirely. The next decade will tell.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    Is nuclear power genuinely a low-carbon energy source?

    Yes. Lifecycle carbon emissions from nuclear power are among the lowest of any electricity source, comparable to offshore wind and significantly below gas or coal. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consistently classifies it as a key low-carbon technology in its net-zero pathways.

    What is a Small Modular Reactor and how does it differ from a conventional nuclear plant?

    A Small Modular Reactor (SMR) is a factory-manufactured nuclear unit, typically producing 50 to 300 megawatts, compared to the 1,600-megawatt output of a conventional plant like Hinkley Point C. The modular, standardised design aims to reduce build time, lower costs, and allow deployment at more locations, including industrial sites and former fossil fuel power stations.

    What is the UK government doing about nuclear energy in 2026?

    The UK Government’s Great British Nuclear programme is actively supporting both large-scale plants and SMR development. Rolls-Royce SMR has been shortlisted for funding, and the government has set a target for nuclear to supply up to 25 per cent of UK electricity by 2050. Hinkley Point C in Somerset remains under construction, with Sizewell C in Suffolk in the planning stages.

    What happens to nuclear waste in the UK?

    Nuclear waste in the UK is stored and managed by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Radioactive waste ranges from low-level material, such as protective clothing, to high-level spent fuel rods. The government is progressing plans for a Geological Disposal Facility, a deep underground repository, though a final site has not yet been confirmed.

    Has public support for nuclear power in the UK increased?

    Yes, notably. Polling from 2025 showed that around 58 per cent of UK adults support the construction of new nuclear power stations, a significant rise from the figures recorded a decade ago. Growing concern about energy security following the Ukraine conflict and heightened awareness of climate change have both contributed to the shift in public sentiment.

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