The agency’s deputy director-general for nuclear safety and security, Tomihiro Taniguchi, said it was “timely and vitally important” to implement the UK government’s decision to create a new independent Nuclear Statutory Corporation (NSC) under the auspices of the existing Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

The new regulator will include all elements of the HSE’s Nuclear Directorate: the Nuclear Installations Directorate, the Office for Civil Nuclear Security and the UK Safeguards Office.

It is also proposed that the new body will absorb the Radioactive Material Transport Team, the part of the Dangerous Goods Division in the Department of Transport that deals with the regulation of radioactive materials.

A key element of the new NSC will be a non-executive board that will be directly responsible for delivering increased levels of transparency, accountability and consistency.

Mike Weightman, head of the Nuclear Directorate and Chief Inspector of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, said the Nuclear Directorate needs to get bigger and needs to get more flexible.

He said: “There could potentially be 60 billion pounds (GBP) (93 billion US dollars, 68 billion euro) of investment going into new nuclear build and there is about GBP 70 billion of decommissioning work to be done.”

The HSE said it plans to have the NSC will be up and running in 2010.

Details of the proposed changes are online.