There was a weirdness in the government’s welcome announcement this week that Rolls-Royce SMR had been selected as preferred bidder to build the UK’s first small modular nuclear reactors, and that £2.5bn of public money would be thrown behind the project. The government body backing the project was something called Great British Energy – Nuclear.
This, it turned out, was the new name for Great British Nuclear, the unit set up in 2023 by the last government to oversee delivery of the nuclear programme. But why risk confusion with Great British Energy, Ed Miliband’s publicly owned company for investing, we thought, in renewables projects such as wind, solar and hydro with a side-mission to ensure that lots of the kit is manufactured in the UK?
