Grant Shapps has condemned the neglect of Britain’s nuclear industry as a “colossal mistake” as he earmarked £20bn for a fleet of new reactors – but admitted it would take six years to even make a decision on giving projects the green light.
The government formally launched Great British Nuclear (GBN), an independent body designed to aid the delivery of new projects, on Tuesday.
In a delayed speech to industry at the Science Museum in London, Shapps noted that opposition had grown against nuclear power in the 1980s and “eventually that mood even percolated its way into government itself”.
He said: “By the early 1990s, just four decades after Britain had led the world by building the first ever commercial nuclear power station at Calder Hall in Cumbria, our nuclear industry was firmly in decline.
“That was a colossal mistake, consigning us to decades more reliance on fossil fuels … We are heralding the beginning of a new nuclear age, a renaissance in Britain’s nuclear industry.”
Conservative governments have been pioneers of nuclear power since Churchill’s built the world’s first nuclear power station in 1953.
— Rt Hon Grant Shapps MP (@grantshapps) July 18, 2023
Today we’re continuing that legacy to grow the economy & build a new line of defence against energy warfare.
🇬🇧 Great British Nuclear 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/mwVM601LWA
Shapps was critical of governments of the past, including under Labour, and said the coalition and the pandemic had played a part in holding up Britain’s nuclear efforts.
Alan Whitehead, Labour’s shadow energy minister, said: “It’s shambolic that after 13 years of Tory government, not one of the 10 nuclear sites approved by the last Labour government have been built.”
Alongside the launch, officials published a tender for procurement contracts for a fleet of small modular reactors (SMR) – factory-built plants designed to produce power more quickly than larger counterparts such as Hinkley Point C.
The tender states that between one and four awards could be made, and up to £20bn spent on developing designs and funding construction. However, Shapps stressed that the figure was “not a spending commitment” and a process will begin this year to select “probably between two and four technologies” to build.
A number of manufacturing firms including Rolls-Royce, NuScale and Hitachi are developing competing SMR technologies.
It is unlikely that any of the suggested £20bn of taxpayer funding will be distributed before the next election. A final decision on each project will not occur before 2029 – a date at which Rolls-Royce had hoped to be up and running – with power being produced from the “early 2030s”.
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GBN will be tasked with helping to deliver the government’s commitment to provide a quarter of the UK’s electricity from nuclear energy by 2050, up from 15% now, and reduce Britain’s dependence on fossil fuels.
However, critics of nuclear power argue that projects are repeatedly delayed, over budget and draw time and resources away from renewables such as wind and solar projects.
Separately, Shapps announced £157m of grant funding to support the UK nuclear industry, on top of £700m announced last year for Sizewell C, a nuclear power plant in Suffolk.
Shapps said the “developer-led” approach to building new plants “just has not delivered”, and that government was playing a more direct role to give investors more certainty.
Rolls-Royce, which has already received £210m in public funds for SMRs, hailed the £20bn potential spend as a “vital step forward”, but Greenpeace has labelled the technology a “bad bet”.