A Viable Business' Rolls-Royce banking on success of small modular reactors

The Hinkley Point C power station in Somerset is gargantuan.

- Jasper Jolly

The 176-hectare (435-acre) site 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.

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 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.

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. Rolls-Royce has stuck with it, despite the closure of other speculative ventures by the group chief executive, Tufan Erginbilgic, in his turnaround plan.

Yet Rolls-Royce SMR, which is led day-to-day by the chief executive, Chris Cholerton, has already blamed government delays for its decision to source key pressure vessels from outside the UK. "Every day that goes past without the decision increases the risk" of the UK falling behind rivals, said Lovegrove. "It is definitely holding us back, both domestically and internationally."