"The volunteerism angle is pretty much unprecedented... it's an unusual way of going about things," said Julian Boswall, planning partner at the nuclear energy group at law firm Eversheds.
"The real battle is going to be around...exactly where the site is going to be depending on how many communities are prepared to come forward."
In theory, there are many suitable sites.
"There's lots of places you could go. This exercise has been done several times before, the general findings done over the last 20 years showed a quarter to a third of the UK was geologically suitable," Chapman said.
But even when the problem of location is solved, another issue is funding.
The government has repeatedly said it will not fund nuclear power, but analysts have said the private sector would not be able to afford the huge costs of waste disposal on top of the at least 2 billion pounds required to build a nuclear plant.
"In terms of the costs of building a repository for future waste, there's no way the private sector is going to be able to fund that," said Robert Pitcher head of nuclear energy at Eversheds law firm.
For many, practicalities are a much lower consideration than the ethical dilemma of leaving a legacy for generations to come.
"That stuff doesn't go away and will last for thousands if not millions of years and that is imposing a burden on future generations," said Andrew Blowers, a former member of the Committee for Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM), which advised the government.
"We don't need to have nuclear because there are other alternatives... fundamentally it seems to me the moral issue is if you don't need it, then don't have it," Blowers said.
Even the carbon-free credentials of nuclear are for some doubtful.
While nuclear proponents say atomic power generation does not produce any of the emissions blamed for global-warming, that is disputed by environmentalists who point to the carbon-intensive uranium extraction and refining process.
They also say the amount of carbon emissions nuclear generation would prevent is insignificant.
"In this context it's difficult to see how nuclear would deal with our global warming problems," Paul Dorfman, senior research fellow at Warwick University and former scientific adviser to the government said.
