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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they have taken to assess (1) which areas of the UK are most geologically suitable for the disposal of nuclear waste, and (2) which areas are less geologically suitable; and what priority they will give to the outcome of that process in consulting local communities prior to designating a site.

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 assess the degree to which a location is suitable or unsuitable.