Proactive Investors - Great British Nuclear has finally been launched in the UK, promising billions in funding to the re-emerging industry but leaving activists and critics reeling.
After last week’s London Science Museum launch was cancelled, the government officially unveiled the new public body on Tuesday, alongside an initial £157mln package for developers.
The arms-length body will aim to support the rollout of small modular reactors (SMRs) in the UK which are being developed by the likes of Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC (LON:RR) and General Electric (NYSE:GE).
“Today, as we open Great British Nuclear […] we are seeing the first brush strokes of our nuclear power renaissance,” net zero secretary Grant Shapps commented.
A key part of the launch is the government’s competition round, which will see certain projects selected for public co-funding.
“[This] could result in billions of pounds of public and private sector investment,” according to Shapps, while later driving down bills and shifting reliance from foreign energy.
However, critics have slammed the greater reliance on nuclear power, arguing the attempt to modularise reactors - so they can be built faster and in factories - won’t overcome time and cost issues seen at larger sites like Hinckley Point C in Somerset.
“SMRs are a long way from being commercially ready and at best will be as uneconomic as existing technology,” Greenwich university energy policy lecturer Stephen Thomas said.
“At worst [they] won't even be technically feasible,” he added, “the answers to reaching net zero with electricity are already available - energy efficiency and renewables.”
Activists also laid into the government’s renewed commitments to Hinckley Point and Sizewell C in Suffolk.
“No 'vote of confidence' can help Sizewell C unless it has a big fat cheque attached,” activist group Stop Sizewell C commented.
“The money announced today [...] is, in the context of expensive nuclear energy, chicken feed,” it added, with Sizewell alone expected to cost between £20bn and £35bn.