The Wylfa site on the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales will host the first small modular reactors ever built in the United Kingdom. This decision is widely regarded by analysts as the most significant energy choice of the Starmer government: a public commitment to next-generation nuclear, backed by £2.6 billion allocated in the 2025 Spending Review and a contract already signed between Great British Energy-Nuclear and Rolls-Royce SMR to begin design work on the first three reactors.
The initial plan calls for three SMR units capable of generating at least 1.4 gigawatts of electrical output — enough to power around three million homes for more than sixty years. In parallel, the National Wealth Fund has committed up to £599 million to the Rolls-Royce SMR programme, with the aim of drawing in private capital and strengthening the project’s commercial credibility. Contracts worth more than £350 million have already been awarded to British companies across the supply chain, with manufacturing hubs in Derby, Sheffield, Manchester and Warrington.
The government has reformed planning rules to include small nuclear plants for the first time, scrapped the designated sites list and removed approval deadlines. A Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce reporting directly to the Prime Minister has been established, mandated to align British regulations with international standards and accelerate licensing processes. This marks a decisive break from decades of inertia: the UK has not built a nuclear power station since 1995.
A significant private-sector bid has also entered the picture. On 1 July 2026, SGE — a European SMR platform founded by Polish billionaire Michał Sołowow — submitted an application under the Advanced Nuclear Framework to build fourteen GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 reactors across three UK sites, for a combined capacity of 4.2 gigawatts. The entirely privately financed project, if confirmed, would cover around 11% of the country’s electricity demand. The BWRX-300 completed the second step of the UK Generic Design Assessment in December 2025, with regulators raising no fundamental obstacles to its deployment.
Building SMRs with factory-prefabricated components — the industrial logic underpinning the Rolls-Royce SMR approach — promises construction timelines of four to five years, compared with the decade or more required by large conventional plants. The programme is expected to create around 40,000 skilled jobs. Rolls-Royce SMR has already attracted interest from foreign governments and is among the finalists for a potential reactor fleet in Sweden: the export dimension of the project is not a side note, it is central to the strategy.
As Starmer approaches the end of his term, the real question is not whether SMRs were a sound policy bet, but whether the institutional and industrial framework built over these years will survive a change of government. The contract with Rolls-Royce is signed, the funding is in place, and the regulatory reforms are in force. British modular nuclear now has a structure of its own — one that no longer depends on the person who set it in motion.
