News

On the weekend of 9 and 10 July, Joe, who works in our Underwriting team, and two of his good friends competed in the inaugural Snowdon24 endurance trail race, a 24-hour ultramarathon, representing Team Summit Mentality in their maiden competitive endurance event.

The three runners managed to summit Yr Wyddfa nine times as a team within the 24-hour window, placing first in the teams-of-three category and sixth overall out of 186 competitors, all whilst raising over £3,000 for their chosen charities, Prostate Cancer UK and Sport in Mind.

Reflecting on the experience, Joe said: “I learnt so much about my body and mind over the 24-hour period, which included a solo summit of England & Wales’ highest peak in total darkness at midnight on the Sunday – by far the toughest challenge I have ever undertaken! Running such a distance on virtually no sleep in near-total darkness has a way of forcing you to enter the darkest depths of your mind and I feel so much stronger now, having completed the challenge.

A huge thanks to our behind-the-scenes race team and documentary makers for all their hard work in realising my, and my friends’, crazy dream – we couldn’t have done it without you, and we can’t wait to see how the documentary turns out.

So excited to see what the future holds for Summit Mentality – watch this space!”

The team plan to take on popular Danish staged trail marathon Etapeløb Thy Trail Race in November of this year.

NRI and its predecessor, the British Insurance (Atomic Energy) Committee (BIAEC), have been supporting Imperial College London with nuclear insurance for many years. Our first policy was created in 1958, just two years after BIAEC’s formation, which coincided with the commercial operation of Calder Hall, the first civil nuclear power plant in the UK in 1956.

The first policies for Imperial covered a subcritical nuclear assembly in South Kensington and provided a separate indemnity of £100,000 for nuclear liability and property damage. In 1964, BIAEC then provided insurance for Imperial’s research reactor that had been built in Silwood Park, Ascot, including a £5m indemnity. At the end of March 2022, Imperial surrendered its site licence after fully decommissioning the reactor, and NRI has now ceased providing nuclear insurance for Imperial. The indemnity of the last liability policy was €70m.

It has been an honour to continuously insure Imperial College London for the past 64 years and NRI is pleased that Imperial will remain active in the field of nuclear engineering, promoting and co-ordinating nuclear energy research in collaboration with key external partners.

Nuclear Risk Insurers (NRI) has collaborated with Lloyd’s Futureset and EDF (UK) to profile the role nuclear will play in decarbonising our future energy supply. The video explains the relationship between Lloyd’s and NRI, and outlines NRI’s contribution to effecting regulatory change.

The video also highlights how NRI, and the capacity it pools from Lloyd’s syndicates and company market members, supports the nuclear industry by providing insurance in close partnership with the international nuclear insurance pools.

To view the video, click here.

To view the full report produced by Lloyd’s click here.

NRI has published its third Corporate Report- access it here.

Our latest Corporate Report has been redesigned to make it more accessible and engaging for our stakeholders. We’ve also included new sections on nuclear insurance pools and third-party liability claims, as well as an article on sustainability from Lloyd’s Chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown.

In addition to the items above, the Corporate Report 2022 features an overview of the current nuclear landscape from Tom Greatrex, CEO at the Nuclear Industry Association, an update on SMR/AMR technology, and interviews with NRI members and international clients.

The report also lays out NRI’s vision for 2022 and beyond, and explains what makes nuclear insurance different from conventional insurance.

In partnership with the UK Nuclear Pool and five other European pools, Nuclear Risk Insurers (NRI) has chosen B3i to provide a distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based application to manage inter-pool reinsurance contracts. The technology will provide increased contract certainty, process efficiency and real-time portfolio oversight.

Contract certainty is one of the main benefits of B3i’s application, as it presents a single version of the truth to all users. Once a transaction has been initiated, it’s immediately distributed to reciprocating pools, and any response is also instantly logged.

NRI will, in future, be able to place and bind a reinsurance contract with a few clicks, avoiding the need to go back and forth via email to request documentation or further information. The whole reinsurance process will be made easier, more efficient and more accurate.

“It removes potential ambiguity from the process, as everyone is looking at the same data,” explained Rebecca Milton, Underwriting Business Analyst at NRI. “There’s no room for different interpretations of the same information.”

In parallel with the five other European pools, the Underwriting team at NRI has thoroughly tested B3i’s application and has now made it live.

Anticipating take-up from other nuclear pools, Claudio Mares, Senior Underwriter at NRI, commented: “In total, almost 30 pools interact during the placement of reinsurance risks, so it was important that we found a partner who could ultimately act and work on behalf of all the pools and get buy-in from all of them.”

Following the submission of its annual report for 2020 on climate actions, Nuclear Risk Insurers has been assigned Gold status in each of the required three steps (Measure, Reduce, Contribute) by the United Nations’ Climate Neutral Now initiative.

Climate Neutral Now is a worldwide community of organisations committed to accelerating the transition to global climate neutrality by 2050. The initiative also serves as a tool to promote and recognise voluntary steps taken by organisations related to climate action.

NRI signed up to Climate Neutral Now in 2020 and, as a result, implemented a detailed travel policy aimed at reducing the impact of its corporate travel activities, which typically have been the key contributor to NRI’s emissions. The restrictions imposed on all travel in 2020 meant that, as well as the reduction in commuting into the London office, the number of flights taken by its employees decreased from over 100 to 20.

All of NRI’s submitted data has been verified by carbon-analytics specialist Alectro.

“Having proven we could manage our international relationships with minimal trips abroad last year,” explained Val Martell, Engineering Surveyor at NRI, “the challenge now is to maintain this approach wherever possible to ensure our sustainability performance remains strong.

“As part of our innovative actions drive, we are seeking to engage our supply chain and wider partners to take action related to climate transparency. One specific example is to raise awareness of the impact of flights to and from annual events for other nuclear pools. We are engaging in conversations with all members to decide what is necessary as a collective. We also actively seek environmentally preferable purchasing for everyday items.”

NRI encourages employees who don’t travel internationally to identify additional innovative actions to reduce the organisation’s greenhouse gas emissions and add them to a dedicated database. One example is a vegetarian week held in May 2021 which promoted cutting back on eating meat.

If you would like to know more about NRI’s net zero activities, please contact us or the Alectro team here.

On 2 November 2021, NRI will host the third webinar in its ‘Frontiers in Nuclear Insurance’ series.

The webinar will focus on ‘Enabling Nuclear in Support of Global Sustainability Goals’ and will be divided into three parts.

The first part will present an update on NRI from its MD, Mark Popplewell, followed by Dr Tim Stone, Chairman of NRI and the NIA, discussing the latest developments in UK nuclear policy, industry and technology. Chris Lambert, Director at the Westminster Energy Forum and adviser to NRI, as chair, will conclude the first section by examining expectations for COP26, as well as the nuclear industry in the context of wider global energy and climate issues.

The second section will feature updates on nuclear regulatory and operational issues from three guests. Ximena Vasquez-Maignan, Head of the Office of Legal Affairs at the Nuclear Energy Agency and the OECD, will detail progress made towards ratifying the revised Paris Convention. Berta Picamal, Legal and International Relations Director at FORATOM, will then look at the implications for Europe of including nuclear within the taxonomy of the EU’s Climate Delegated Act. Lastly, Markus Koenig, Senior Underwriter at Munich Re, will discuss the risk of nuclear construction in the context of carbon emissions.

The third and final part of the webinar will see Patrick Tiernan, Chief of Markets at Lloyd’s of London, focus on developments in the London insurance market which support decarbonisation in the specific context of the nuclear industry.

If you would like more information on our events, contact eithne.stanton@nuclear-risk.com.

You can follow NRI on LinkedIn.

On 22 April 2021, NRI continued its webinar series, ‘Frontiers in Nuclear Insurance’, by hosting ‘Nuclear Risk and Regulation Update, plus Future Considerations for Fusion’, the series’ second event. The webinar was attended by more than 130 representatives of the nuclear and insurance industry worldwide.

Chris Lambert, Director at the Westminster Energy Forum and adviser to NRI, chaired the event and opened proceedings with a brief overview of why COP26 is a pivotal moment in the history of global fossil fuel emissions. He explained that the massive growth in electricity demand needed to decarbonise the heat and transport sectors called for a huge increase in nuclear capacity, particularly in emerging economies where six-fold energy growth is required. 

NRI and Nuclear Industry Association (NIA) Chairman Dr Tim Stone followed by pointing out that existing policy won’t be enough to realise this change. He argued that time is of the essence and markets alone cannot be relied upon to deliver the necessary progress. Dr Stone felt that governments had to start seriously considering now the nature of the world’s ideal energy system in 2050 and work backwards from there in order to fully understand the roadmap needed to guide the world to that destination and at the appropriate scale. 

Dr Mina Golshan, Deputy Chief Inspector and Director at the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), then addressed the ONR’s current challenges. Chief among these was decommissioning, which she revealed may be handled by a separate organisation in the future. Dr Golshan also highlighted the ONR’s need to keep abreast of technological developments so that, for example, it can simplify the regulatory burden for designers of SMRs/AMRs. 

The remainder of the webinar focused on the current state of nuclear fusion and regulatory requirements, inviting four speakers with particular insight to offer their views on the topic. 

Paul Methven, Director of STEP at UK Atomic Energy Authority, stressed that the UK will only remain a world leader in fusion if a number of criteria are satisfied: it needs to be the most attractive country in the world for fusion research and delivery; it should offer a supportive regulatory and operating environment; and the government should be vocal about fusion, support exports of fusion equipment and develop a policy that includes fusion as a low-carbon part of the energy mix. 

Giving his personal opinion on the regulation of fusion, Prof. Laurence Williams, from the Centre for Nuclear Engineering at Imperial College London, outlined the issues caused by fusion not currently being covered by a specific regulatory framework. Aside from the challenges for developers and operators, he also underlined investor concerns about fusion being linked to nuclear safety regulation even though it presents far less of a safety risk than fission. Prof. Williams felt that non-nuclear regulators have the capability to regulate fusion power plants, but will need greater technical skills and training to do so. This is vital, as the industry needs to be able to explain the hazards as transparently as possible in order to instil public confidence in fusion as a technology. 

Stéphane Calpena, Safety & Quality Department Deputy Head at ITER, provided his perspective on the safety of fusion. He delineated the extent of the safety risks posed by a number of substances typically found in fusion reactors and concluded by stating that none of them were any higher than the radiation levels usually encountered during “a day’s skiing in the Alps”. Mr Calpena explained why, in the case of ITER, it had been important for it to be classified as a nuclear licensed site and to fall within the scope of the OECD’s Paris Convention. This enabled ITER to provide confidence to the public, as part of ITER’s social licence responsibilities.

The webinar was wrapped up by Gianluca Pisanello, Chief Operating Officer at First Light Fusion, who emphasised the need for fusion to produce as many GWs of output as possible, especially during the 2040s when it is likely to be most required. For Mr Pisanello, fusion is more of a revolutionary technology than simply a disruptive one and he argued for a proportionate approach to regulation across different fusion technologies. 

If you would like more information on our events, contact eithne.stanton@nuclear-risk.com.

Follow NRI on LinkedIn.