Rolls Royce - £2.5Billion from the Taxpayer
Posted: 16th June 2025
The government said it would pledge £2.5bn to small modular reactors during this three-year spending review
Rolls-Royce group wins government backing to build UK’s first small modular nuclear reactors. Only one preferred bidder chosen because of ‘affordability issues’, says chair of nuclear group. A group led by British engineer Rolls-Royce has won UK government backing to build the country’s first small modular nuclear reactors, in a step forward for the nascent technology but one that officials said did not go as far as hoped. The consortium led by the FTSE 100 company has been selected as the only preferred bidder for state financial support to get small modular reactors off the ground in Britain. Simon Bowen, chair of the government’s nuclear arm Great British Energy — Nuclear, said it marked a “huge step forward” for the industry, but added he would have liked to be able to back more than one reactor developer. “It’s an affordability issue,” Bowen said in an interview with the Financial Times. “I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’ve always said we should do two for resilience and competitive tension, but the reality is we’re in a constrained fiscal environment. We’ve got one and that’s great news for the nuclear industry. “Did we want two? Yes we did. Fiscally constrained. We’ll take one and make that work and build more Rolls-Royce reactors.” Holtec, one of four bidders
shortlisted alongside GE Hitachi, and Canadian-owned Westinghouse Electric, said it was “disappointed” not to be chosen as a preferred bidder and it would scale back plans for a factory in South Yorkshire as a result. Westinghouse Electric dropped out of the bidding earlier this year. ČEZ Group, the Czech utility, has a 20 per cent stake in the Rolls-Royce SMR consortium as part of a wider strategic partnership between the two companies. Other backers include private investment vehicle BNF Resources, Constellation of the US and the Qatar Investment Authority. The government said it would pledge £2.5bn to small modular reactors during this three-year spending review period, helping to develop Rolls-Royce’s technology as well as develop sites for the reactors. It would then award contracts to build the power plants. Any private investors would recoup their money through a levy on consumer energy bills. When the contest was first announced in 2024, then energy minister Grant Shapps indicated up to £20bn of government funding could be spent supporting potentially two developers. Although the initial agreement with the government is just for three units, Sir Stephen Lovegrove, chair of Rolls-Royce SMR, said the company expected to build more for the UK and elsewhere.