Ed Miliband's bet on mini nukes risks backfiring – unless he goes all in
Depending on who you ask, it's the breakthrough technology that will be key to net zero – or a risky, expensive folly.
But now, Ed Miliband has placed his bet: Britain is backing mini nuclear power plants.
On Tuesday, the Energy Secretary confirmed that the Government will provide billions of pounds towards the development of the country's first small modular reactors (SMRs) as part of a new 'golden age' for atomic energy.
They will be designed by Derby-based Rolls-Royce, which emerged victorious from a two-year competition, and come online in the mid-2030s, providing crucial 'baseload' power to the grid.
Each reactor will be able to power around 1m homes, one third of the output from a larger, Hinkley Point C-sized reactor.
In effect, Mr Miliband is betting that smaller reactors will boost his net zero plans with smaller price tags and faster build times than big nuclear plants - with their size also meaning they can be built in locations much closer to people's homes.
Yet with SMRs still to be proven, the key question is: can they actually deliver?
Nuclear power has been staging something of a comeback in recent years, as countries including Britain and America endorse it as a way of significantly reducing the costs of the green energy transition.
This is because having more 'firm' power on the grid from nuclear reduces the need for extra wind and solar farms, grid infrastructure and backup storage.
But nuclear projects in the West have a patchy history, with schemes tending to bust through both their budgets and their construction schedules.
Hinkley Point C, in Somerset, for example, was originally meant to cost £20bn – but the final figure may have ballooned to as much as £47bn by the time it is finished, including inflation.
It will also have taken much longer to build than anyone had expected, with its original completion date in 2025 likely to be pushed back until the early 2030s.
Mini nuclear plants are meant to solve both of these problems by reducing complexity and construction times.
They would use the same proven light water reactor technology as large plants. But instead of building them on-site, large sections would be produced in factories and then transported to the site for final assembly – like a high-tech piece of Ikea furniture.
Their smaller footprint should in theory bring other potential benefits too, such as more flexibility in where they can be built.
In February, Sir Keir Starmer vowed to 'push past the Nimbys' and open up more sites to potential nuclear development, ripping up a previous policy that said only government-chosen sites were suitable.
'Because SMRs are a fraction of the size of a traditional nuclear power station, they can be built in many more locations, providing secure, home-grown energy for our traditional energy-intensive industries to state-of-the-art data centres,' says Sam Richards, of Britain Remade, a pro-growth campaign group.
Under Boris Johnson, who was strongly supportive of SMRs, the government previously floated the idea that households could have money deducted from their energy bills if they lived near the football stadium-sized plants, in a bid to quell a backlash.
Each Rolls-Royce SMR will generate about 470 megawatts (MW) of power, putting the plants at the larger end of the scale for mini reactors.
By comparison, those proposed by rivals such as GE-Hitachi and Holtec International would generate about 300MW.
This is far less than the much larger reactors used by under-construction plants such as Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, which will both house two reactors with capacities of 1,600MW each.
On a per-megawatt basis, the mini plants will also be more expensive.
Because of their smaller size, the economic case for SMRs only stacks up if the Government ensures they are built at scale and the designs remain highly standardised, experts say.
According to a 2024 report by the US Department of Energy, this means at least 50pc of the spending for each plant should be on the factory-made modules.
'The value proposition for SMRs centres around maximising design standardisation and factory production,' the report says.
'Without this, an SMR risks being a civil works construction project without the benefit of economies of scale.'
Ministers will also have to be prepared to open up far more sites for SMR development.
The first SMRs are likely to be built at either Wylfa, Anglesey, or Oldbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire, both of which were acquired by the Government last year in a £160m deal, although that is yet to be confirmed.
Other options that are already licenced include Bradwell in Essex, Moorside in Cumbria; and existing nuclear sites such as Heysham, Hartlepool and Torness.
However, one industry insider suggests the Government should also consider former coal power plant sites and industrial estates that host factories.
'You need to have sites that are closer to population centres, places that cannot take larger plants, that is the sweet spot,' the insider adds.
'To get the efficiencies of scale, you also need to build a fleet. For 'Nth of a kind' costs you would eventually be aiming for, we are talking something like a minimum of six to eight reactors.
'If that happens, this could be a real breakthrough for the industry – but it has to happen at scale.'
However, nuclear power still faces huge opposition from some quarters, with no guarantee that households across the country will welcome the prospect of a mini plant nearby.
And many critics argue that there is no reason that SMRs should prove any different to larger plants.
A project being developed by NuScale in the US, for example, saw multiple budget increases before it was eventually cancelled, while GE-Hitachi's proposed reactor in Ontario, Canada, was recently given an updated price tag of C$21bn.
Rolls-Royce has previously said it expected its SMRs to cost between £2bn and £3bn each, but the first one is likely to be significantly more expensive.
The Government has already budgeted £2.5bn of spending for the UK programme, up to 2029, before construction is expected to begin.
'Nuclear power is a white elephant and a terrible legacy to leave behind – for countless generations to clean up,' says Dale Vince, the tycoon behind Ecotricity and a Labour donor.
'With nuclear, it's always the same story; decades late, massively over budget and never meets the hype.
'We need more affordable energy – the wind and the sun are our fastest, cheapest, cleanest sources. We don't need new nuclear power stations. It makes no sense to spend vast sums of time and money on them.'
Rolls-Royce argues that SMRs can provide 'a British solution to a global energy crisis'. The company is hoping to grab a slice of an expected £500bn market for mini reactors for Britain, generating thousands of skilled jobs and a stable source of work for domestic suppliers.
The company has already secured a deal to build SMRs for the Czech government and is vying for business elsewhere in Europe, with the British Government's endorsement of the technology likely to be viewed as an important vote of confidence.
At home, however, the biggest obstacle to the rollout of SMRs may ultimately be political, depending on how willing ministers are to reform the planning system and overhaul the approach to building nuclear plants.
Currently, nuclear meets around 14pc of the UK's electricity needs. Under the Government's plans, this could rise – although the scale of the SMR programme has already been trimmed back from an expected two to three developers to just one.
'Now that Rolls-Royce has been selected, we need to rekindle the nuclear ambition of the 1950s and 60s, when Britain led the world in nuclear innovation,' says Richards, at Britain Remade.
'That means moving at pace and identifying sites immediately, cutting red tape, and ensuring SMRs don't face the same planning delays that have held back their gigawatt-scale cousins.
'If we get this right, SMRs can help power a new era of energy security, reindustrialisation, and net zero – delivered faster, cheaper and more widely than ever before.'
It is a bet that Mr Miliband might just win – but only if he and his Cabinet colleagues are willing to go all in.
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