Funding for the new breed of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) has been split between the government and private investors including BNF Resources and the US generator Exelon Generation.Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the government's initial investment of £210 million represented "a once in a lifetime opportunity" for the UK to deploy more low carbon energy than ever before.

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He added: "Small modular reactors offer exciting opportunities to cut costs and build more quickly, ensuring we can bring clean electricity to people’s homes and cut our already-dwindling use of volatile fossil fuels even further."In working with Rolls-Royce, we are proud to back the largest engineering collaboration the UK has ever seen - uniting some of the most respected and innovating organisations on the planet."Not only can we maximise British content, create new intellectual property and reinvigorate supply chains, but also position our country as a global leader in innovative nuclear technologies we can potentially export elsewhere."

Job creation and cost efficient

The project is expected to create 40,000 jobs by 2050 in a nation where, currently, 21% of energy is generated by the 13 existing, large nuclear plants, almost half of which are due to retired by 2030.Aside from being much quicker to build than large-scale nuclear plants, SMRs should be considerably cheaper and not subject to the sort of cost overruns that have bedevilled recent projects: for instance, the initial estimate of £18 billion for the construction of the Sizewell C plant in Somerset has already risen to £23 billion.Ministers were finally persuaded to back the SMR plan amid warnings not only about global warming, but also the probability of a power crisis by the early 2030s.Each of the mini reactors - which Rolls-Royce first started work on in the 1950s to power nuclear submarines - will be about twice the size of a football pitch and will be capable of supplying electricity to a million homes.It is hoped that a streamlined planning system will enable to the first to be build within a decade. Most of the plants are expected to be located in coastal areas in the northern half of the country.

Combating climate change

Warren East, Chief Executive of Rolls-Royce, said the SMR programme also represented an innovative way to tackle the global threat of climate change."With the Rolls-Royce SMR technology, we have developed a clean energy solution which can deliver cost competitive and scalable net zero power for multiple applications from grid and industrial electricity production to hydrogen and synthetic fuel manufacturing," he said.Tony Danker, Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), said the investment in SMRs was a "hugely promising milestone for a technology that can not only boost the economy but help deliver a greener and more secure energy system overall".And Tom Greatrex, Chief Executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, said the funding sent a "huge signal to private investors that the government wants SMRs alongside new large-scale stations to hit net zero".

More expensive option

However, Dr Doug Parr, Chief Scientist at environmental group Greenpeace, said that SMRs were still more expensive than renewable technologies and that there was "still no solution to dispose of the radioactive waste they leave behind and no consensus on where they should be located".He added: "What's worse, there's not even a prototype in prospect any time soon. The immediate deadline for action is sharp cuts in emissions by 2030, and small reactors will have no role in that."

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