Rolls-Royce SMR has signed a contract with Great British Energy – Nuclear (GBE-N) to design and build the UK’s first three modular reactors at the Wylfa site, on the coast of Anglesey in North Wales. The British government had selected Rolls-Royce SMR as its preferred bidder back in June 2025, committing an additional £2.5 billion in public funding. Final approval has now been granted and the contract has been signed.
The reactor designed by Rolls-Royce SMR is a three-loop pressurised water reactor capable of generating approximately 470 MW of electrical output — enough to power one million homes, or a city the size of Sheffield, for at least sixty years. Unlike conventional large-scale power plants, components are factory-assembled and transported to site, significantly cutting construction timelines. Wylfa can accommodate up to eight units, though the initial phase covers three — with meaningful room to grow.
The contract comes at a time when demand for clean, reliable energy is rising faster than the traditional grid can absorb. Major data centre operators — Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta — have secured nuclear capacity agreements over the past eighteen months at a scale exceeding what the United States contracted in the previous two decades combined. The rationale is straightforward: a single next-generation AI campus can draw between 1 and 2 gigawatts on a continuous basis, a load that solar and wind alone cannot meet with the required consistency. Fission reactors remain the only source capable of delivering clean, stable, round-the-clock power at that scale.
Rolls-Royce SMR is currently the most advanced European project in the regulatory pipeline, with the Generic Design Assessment already under way with UK authorities. On the international front, Czech energy group CEZ Group had signed an early works agreement to begin preparatory activities in the Czech Republic, extending the programme’s commercial footprint beyond the UK. Rolls-Royce Holdings reported underlying annual revenues of £20.1 billion in 2025, with an operating profit of £3.46 billion.
The Rolls-Royce SMR programme is taking shape within a global landscape where more than twenty-two gigawatts of projects are in development and the first commercial plants are expected to come online before 2030. For the UK, Wylfa represents more than a construction site: it is proof that the domestic industrial supply chain can return to building nuclear after decades away. If schedules hold, the three reactors could enter service at a moment when energy demand will already be well beyond today’s levels.
