From policy to practice: how open innovation turns nuclear strategy into delivery

Parliament rightly focuses on strategy. Delivery is where national missions succeed or fail.

As Nuclear Week in Parliament 2026 convenes policymakers, regulators and industry leaders, the strategic direction for the UK’s nuclear and net zero ambitions is clearer than ever.

What is now emerging just as clearly is a shared delivery challenge: how to turn policy intent, funding and innovation ambition into outcomes delivered at pace, affordably, and safely.

Across government, strategy documents increasingly acknowledge that innovation is essential.

What they rarely specify is how innovation is translated into deployment – particularly in complex, regulated environments such as nuclear decommissioning.

The same gap is evident in delivery of new nuclear projects, where cost, schedule and regulatory friction can constrain progress despite strong policy backing. This is the gap between policy and practice. It is also where structured open innovation can make the difference.

When strategy meets reality

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s Draft Business Plan 2026–29 sets out a clear, credible and demanding mission: to safely, securely and cost-effectively decommission the UK’s nuclear legacy, while reducing hazards at pace and delivering value for money under sustained public-finance pressure.

The scale is significant: Over £4 billion of annual expenditure, and 47 strategic outcomes across spent fuel, nuclear materials, waste management and site remediation.

Similarly, the UK Net Zero Research and Innovation Framework recognises that a third of the emissions reductions required for net zero by 2050 will come from technologies not yet commercially available.

Government has responded with substantial investment – around £4.2 billion between 2022 and 2025 – spanning early research through to late-stage demonstration. This investment sits alongside unprecedented commitments to new nuclear delivery, including large-scale power, SMRs and advanced nuclear technologies, all of which intensify the need for faster, more reliable routes from innovation to deployment.

Regulation is also a recognised factor. The work of the Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce and the publication of the Nuclear Regulatory Review in 2025 acknowledge that the current regulatory framework, while grounded in safety, has become a barrier to pace and affordability.

The review offers a blueprint for reform, signalling the need for system-wide prioritisation and proportionate regulation to enable accelerated delivery across both civil and defence nuclear programmes.

Ambition is not lacking. What is increasingly evident is that delivery capacity is now a binding constraint.

Why innovation programmes often fail to deliver impact

Public innovation programmes have generated ideas, intellectual property and capability at scale.

Yet both the NDA Business Plan and the Net Zero R&I Progress Report acknowledge persistent challenges:

• Innovation outcomes are inherently uncertain
• Some programmes struggle to attract high-quality solutions
• Others terminate early or require extensions to realise benefits
• Impacts beyond Technology Readiness Level (TRL) uplift are difficult to evidence

Across the net zero portfolio, programmes increased technology maturity by an average of two TRLs, generated hundreds of patents, and leveraged private funding. These are positive signals – but they do not, on their own, guarantee deployment.

The missing link is often structured delivery:

• Clear operational ownership
• Defined routes into regulated environments
• Mechanisms to move from feasibility to demonstration to use
• Sustained commitment to carry innovations through to completion, including resourcing, sponsorship, and accountability beyond early-stage pilots

Without these, innovation risks stalling in the well-documented “valley of death” between policy aspiration and operational reality.

Challenge-led models: Turning ambition into action

Both nuclear decommissioning and net zero transition share a defining feature: they are demand-led missions.

The challenges are known, the risks are real, and the cost of delay is high. This is equally true for new nuclear build, where delivery risk translates directly into higher costs for consumers and taxpayers.

Challenge-led innovation models are increasingly recognised as a way to accelerate progress – but only when they are designed around delivery from the outset. The most effective models share several characteristics:

• Challenges articulated by operators, not abstract technology calls but real immediate problems
• Time-bound feasibility and demonstration phases, reducing risk early
• Active collaboration between innovators and end-users
• Clear pathways into deployment, aligned with safety, security and regulatory requirements
• An independent, boundary-spanning delivery function that understands the operator’s context while retaining the autonomy to engage widely and challenge established approaches

In regulated sectors, these features are not optional. They are what make innovation investable, adoptable and scalable.

Nuclear as a testbed for delivery-ready innovation

The NDA’s mission illustrates why delivery architecture matters. High-hazard reduction at Sellafield, first-of-a-kind decommissioning at Nuclear Restoration Services sites, plutonium immobilisation, and preparations for Geological Disposal all demand solutions that work in real environments, not just on paper.

The Business Plan also identifies “critical enablers” – skills, R&D, digital resilience, integration and sustainability – as essential to mission success. What it does not prescribe is how these enablers are operationalised at pace.

This is where structured open innovation programmes, like FIS360 and Sellafield’s Game Changers, can act as execution mechanisms, translating strategic priorities into tested, deployable solutions while managing risk and cost.

Game Changers – delivering nuclear innovation

The Game Changers programme is a targeted innovation initiative designed to bridge the gap between strategic nuclear decommissioning priorities and practical, deployable and commercially viable solutions.

Within the NDA and Sellafield innovation landscape, it serves as a key enabler to translate national strategy into operational delivery, focusing on hazard reduction, cost-efficiency, and accelerated progress on high-priority missions.

Its approach aligns with the wider direction of the UK’s Modern Industrial Strategy, which positions nuclear as a cornerstone of energy security, net zero delivery, and support for innovative high-tech firms.

Challenges are identified in collaboration with site operators, technical teams, and regulatory stakeholders, then articulated clearly to attract innovators from a global audience across both nuclear and non-nuclear sectors.

Unlike ideation-focused programmes, Game Changers embeds delivery in its design, supporting feasibility studies, proof-of-concept work, and demonstrations that are structured to integrate directly into operational workflows.

This ensures that innovation directly contributes to tangible mission outcomes, rather than remaining conceptual.

Evidence of impact from Game Changers

Game Changers has proven that strategic innovation can directly accelerate delivery in the nuclear sector, turning complex challenges into measurable operational outcomes.

Since its inception, the programme has assessed over 1,000 applications, supported more than 300 feasibility studies, and delivered 125 proof-of-concept projects, generating numerous active technology demonstrations.

These initiatives have leveraged private sector investment and additional grant funding significantly in excess of the programme delivery costs, and have predicted savings of many millions in decommissioning costs while reducing risk and accelerating deployment.

The programme’s impact extends beyond numbers: it has built a thriving cross-sector community, drawing technologies from space, medicine, automotive, food, and oil & gas and adapting them for nuclear applications.

As Chris Ford, Senior Academic at Lancaster University, observed, the programme’s “skill in collaborative challenge design has been instrumental in changing the trajectories of multiple technologies, allowing significant advances across industries.”

Similarly, Sellafield’s Andres Alfaro, Future Technologies Team, highlighted how Game Changers has “built a thriving community of innovators…developing world-class solutions to our complex challenges,” while it has also been noted by Sellafield that the programme is “firmly embedded in operational processes and future strategy,” demonstrating that innovation can be structured to deliver real-world results even under budget and operational pressures.

Lessons for policymakers: What to back

Taken together, the NDA Business Plan and the Net Zero R&I Framework point to a consistent conclusion: innovation is necessary but insufficient without delivery capability.

For policymakers, the implications are clear:

• Funding innovation is only half the task
• Delivery-ready models reduce risk, not increase it
• Operator-led, challenge-based programmes provide clearer value for money
• Proven delivery mechanisms deserve sustained support and replication

As fiscal pressures tighten and missions expand, the question is no longer whether the UK should innovate – but how it ensures innovation delivers.

Bridging the gap between strategy and outcomes

Parliament’s focus on strategy is both appropriate and necessary. But strategy achieves little without mechanisms that translate intent into action. In nuclear decommissioning and across the net zero agenda, the next phase of progress depends on execution discipline.

Structured open innovation – designed around real challenges, real operators and real deployment – offers a way to bridge that gap. Programmes that embed delivery from the outset do more than generate ideas: they turn national ambition into measurable progress.

As Nuclear Week in Parliament 2026 highlights the scale of the UK’s nuclear mission, it also presents an opportunity to recognise and back the models that are already proving how policy becomes practice.

Source Link: https://businesscrack.co.uk/20...