On 2 December 2025, the Government will activate section 304 of the Energy Act 2023, creating an “excluded disposal site” route for certain low‑risk nuclear waste facilities to operate outside the nuclear third‑party liability regime. The change was signed off by a minister on 6 November and is presented as a technical tidy‑up, but it reshapes who bears legal responsibility if something goes wrong at qualifying sites.

An excluded disposal site must hold an environmental permit that explicitly bars acceptance of “disqualifying” waste above set radioactivity concentration limits, and it must show a clean site history - either never having taken such waste or having removed it. Those limits are drawn from the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s 2016 decision on very low‑level waste. In law, the mechanism sits in new section 7C of the Nuclear Installations Act 1965, inserted by section 304 of the Energy Act.

If a site later breaches the permit and receives disqualifying waste, the operator must notify the Secretary of State within 21 days and remove the material within 90 days or risk losing excluded status. The Secretary of State can confirm when the breach has been remedied; otherwise, the site re‑enters the nuclear regime. These time‑bound duties are written directly into section 7C.

The Government’s own explanatory notes say section 304 is intended to exclude certain low‑risk disposal installations from the nuclear liability regime, implementing the NEA’s 2016 recommendation, while related 2014 guidance covers installations in decommissioning. Parliament partly commenced the provision in January 2024 to enable detailed regulations, with the remainder now brought into force.

Stepping outside the nuclear third‑party liability regime matters because that framework-updated in the UK on 1 January 2022 when the 2004 Protocols to the Paris and Brussels Conventions took effect-boosted operator liability from £140 million to a path towards €1.2 billion and extended personal‑injury claim periods from 10 to 30 years. By contrast, excluded sites would fall back on general civil law and environmental law, reflecting their much lower risk profile.

Scale explains the policy push. The UK Radioactive Waste Inventory shows 2.75 million m³ of very low‑level waste forecast, and that most low‑activity wastes are routed to permitted landfills rather than the national repository. About half of all LLW by volume is projected for off‑site landfill, and over 93% of VLLW is expected to go the same way-exactly the kind of routes this change is designed to clarify.

Safety oversight does not disappear. Excluded disposal sites remain under environmental permitting by the Environment Agency in England (and sister regulators in the devolved nations). The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s strategy emphasises the waste hierarchy and a risk‑based approach so that scarce capacity is reserved for higher‑hazard wastes while lower‑risk materials are handled in appropriately permitted facilities.

This move does not affect plans for a Geological Disposal Facility for higher‑activity wastes. Deep geological repositories raise distinct liability questions precisely because of long timeframes and hazard levels; international work on how liability applies post‑closure continues. Exclusion under section 304 is strictly for low‑risk installations and does not extend to a future GDF.

For communities near permitted landfills or on‑site disposal cells, the practical test will be transparency. Residents should be able to see permit conditions that prohibit disqualifying waste, understand the triggers that would strip excluded status, and access monitoring data. Expect local planning and environmental consultations to remain the main channels for scrutiny, while operators will need to demonstrate swift compliance if any breach occurs. As ever with radioactive waste, trust hinges on visible enforcement as much as on tidy drafting.