Hinkley Point A and B nuclear power stations near Bridgewater, England | Matt Cardy/Getty Images UK confirms plans to exit Euratom Article 50 bill contains note saying that Britain wants to leave EU agency responsible for nuclear safety and security.

Britain will seek to leave the European Atomic Energy Community, the government confirmed Thursday in explanatory notes published with the bill authorizing it to trigger Article 50.

According to the bill's notes, Article 50 applies to withdrawal from the EU as well as Euratom, the agency responsible for nuclear safety and security.

The British government had not previously stated its intentions to sever its ties to Euratom, but EU lawyers had warned that leaving the EU would automatically trigger a Euratom exit too. The agency is the lesser known of the three communities that led to the European Union’s creation.

The move will put pressure on the U.K.’s own Office for Nuclear Responsibility to quickly add enough staff to cover nuclear non-proliferation inspections and authorize the sale of nuclear material, or turn to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for help.

The toughest question is who will inspect British civil nuclear sites that generate power, fabricate fuel and manage waste. The U.K. currently takes up about a quarter of the time Euratom spends on safeguard checks in the EU. Whoever picks up Euratom’s responsibilities in Britain — the IAEA or the national regulator — will likely require more staff and money.

Euratom may also be forced to transfer its ownership of the U.K.'s nuclear material to the country, which could be complicated by the fact that the U.K. also enriches, fabricates and reprocesses spent nuclear fuel on behalf of many other members.

Britain's exit from Euratom — dubbed Brexatom — could also tip the balance in favor of the Continent's heavily anti-nuclear energy camp. Britain is the last standing vocal nuclear advocate in Western Europe. France has historically been a nuclear powerhouse, but new nuclear has less of a future there. Prime Minister Theresa May approved the U.K.’s first new station, Hinkley Point C, in two decades in September.

Ditching Euratom also implies pulling out of its research and development wing, most of which is focused on the massive ITER nuclear fusion project under construction in France — trying to generate energy by replicating the fusion of atomic nuclei that powers the sun.

The U.K. is also home to the smaller Joint European Torus nuclear fusion site, dubbed the "little ITER," which sends its experimental results and design studies to the French site.

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