‘A viable business’: Rolls-Royce banking on success of small modular reactors
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British firm in the vanguard of companies arguing SMRs are a quicker and cheaper option than large Hinkley-sized plants. The Hinkley Point C power plant in Somerset is gargantuan. The 176-hectare (435-acre) plant will provide 3.2 gigawatts of power, enough for 6m homes. It is not just the project that is huge: the cost is as well. With a price tag that has ballooned to a reported £48bn, and delayed by at least five years, it has become a symbol of the pitfalls of nuclear power.
![[Portrait of Stephen Lovegrove with light fittings in the background]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/30501086651c0b7235bce6e71b595a94079102fb/0_612_4000_2401/master/4000.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
But a clutch of companies argue they have a quicker, cheaper option than large Hinkley-sized plants in the form of small modular reactors (SMRs), which can be built in a factory and then slotted together on site. Britain’s Rolls-Royce, which also makes reactors for submarines in Derby, is vying with three North American competitors to gain orders from the UK government.
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Stephen Lovegrove, the chair for the last year of Rolls-Royce SMR, the joint venture undertaking the work, claimed the company is 18 months ahead of its rivals, in an interview at the FTSE 100 company’s London headquarters. However, Lovegrove, formerly the top civil servant in the government’s energy department and the Ministry of Defence, expressed his frustration at another year’s delay in a UK government competition that has pushed Rolls-Royce’s earliest date for a new reactor to 2032 or 2033, beyond a target which had already slipped from 2029 to 2031.
