Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they are taking as part of their consultation on geological disposal infrastructure for nuclear waste to screen out those areas of the UK that are geologically unsuitable for the disposal of nuclear waste.

Ahead of the launch of a siting process for a Geological Disposal Facility, the Government will publish the findings from a National Geological Screening (NGS) exercise that brings together existing information about England, Wales and Northern Ireland’s geology relevant to the long term safety of a geological disposal facility. The findings from this exercise will not assess areas as either ‘suitable’ or ‘unsuitable’, but will provide an initial indication of the likely geological suitability of an area where the local community is interested in participating in the consent-based siting process for the disposal facility. There are a large range of potentially suitable geological settings in the UK, and the findings will inform early discussions with communities and provide the basis of subsequent detailed, site-specific geological investigations, which will be necessary to determine, whether a location is suitable or unsuitable.