Rolls urges fast track for nuclear reactors

ROLLS-ROYCE is locked in a row with ministers as it seeks to speed up the launch of a new generation of mini nuclear reactors amid unprecedented increases in gas prices.

The company’s first reactors are not scheduled to come online until the early 2030s, but executives are keen to move faster as the West seeks to wean itself off Russian fossil fuels.

Rolls insiders are said to be frustrated by the Government’s approach to nuclear energy, considering its approval process unnecessarily slow.

The FTSE 100 engineer wants to build reactors capable of producing about 470 megawatts of power – a seventh of the energy generated by large new sites such as Hinkley Point C, but at £1.8bn apiece, a twelfth of the cost. Government sources said that Rolls’s product has no prototypes, so must go through exhaustive safety checks.

But Rolls scientists have pointed out that it is based on established technology and the company’s decades-long understanding of nuclear power learnt from submarine development.

Critics suggest the timeframe needed to build the reactors will make them redundant, because solar and wind power will be cheap and abundant in a decade. But supporters say that unlike renewables, nuclear is a reliable source of power that does not depend on as-yet undeveloped battery storage.

The programme took a step forward this week after Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, asked government regulators to assess Rolls’s designs.

Rolls may receive help in speeding up the selection of suitable locations by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which manages old, defunct nuclear power plants. The smaller reactors can be placed there and take advantage of access to the power grid, existing security and a skilled workforce.

The Government has supplied the project with £210m of funding.

The Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, said: “While small modular reactors do not yet exist, countries across the world are racing to develop the technology. Rolls-royce has confirmed SMRS will be available to the UK grid in the early 2030s and we are working to their timeline.”

Rolls declined to comment.