The British government announced on Monday that six companies had been selected as finalists in a tender to build small nuclear reactors, including Britain’s Rolls Royce and France’s EDF, before the winners were announced in the spring.
Other selected companies are the GE-Hitachi alliance and the American companies Holtec, NuScale Power and Westinghouse.
Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government launched this call for tenders earlier this year to select companies to build small nuclear reactors, an element of its energy supply and decarbonisation strategy given the difficulties of building traditional nuclear power plants.
London said in March that it would devote 210 million pounds (242 million euros) to this small power station project.
Will it not be operational before 2030?
This “will translate into billions of pounds of investment in the United Kingdom and generate thousands of jobs,” says the Conservative Party statement, in full congress, and while the Labor opposition shows a comfortable advantage in the polls. for the legislative elections scheduled for next year.
The United Kingdom, which has committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, wants to accelerate the development of nuclear energy, which does not release CO2 into the atmosphere.
Less expensive and therefore easier to finance than the traditional Sizewell C and Hinkley Point C power station projects, both supported by EDF, the small modular reactors should require years of development and not be operational before the early 2030s.
The Government of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave the green light in August 2022 to the financing of Sizewell C and confirmed an investment of 700 million pounds (more than 800 million euros).
This plant, which will consist of two 3.2 gigawatt (GW) EPR reactors, is expected to cost in total between 20 and 30 billion pounds (between 23 and 35 billion euros). Production is not expected to begin before 2035.
Source: BFM TV
