NuScale joins Rolls-Royce and Bill Gates in race to build UK nuclear reactors

A US nuclear developer is poised to join the race to build new reactors in the UK and has urged the government to go faster in picking a preferred technology.

NuScale, based in Oregon, said it was “very active” in the UK market and that it would “engage with the activity around the government’s SMR competition”.

The UK is running a contest to find suppliers of small modular reactors (SMRs), which hold the promise of zero-emission, lower-cost nuclear power as they can be made in a factory and assembled on site. This reduces the vast overheads of large nuclear projects.

NuScale is developing an SMR called VOYGR, which is based on a traditional nuclear design called a pressurised water-cooled reactor. It is the first SMR to have been certified by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The UK government has set up a new body, Great British Nuclear (GBN), to select new projects. It is aiming to settle on winning SMR designs by the autumn.

Tom Mundy, president of VOYGR services and delivery, said NuScale would not require development money from GBN as its project was ready to deploy. “We don’t need the support that has been suggested … We’re ready to deliver the project much earlier than GBN has suggested,” he said.

“GBN suggests people could start building SMRs by 2030. That means taking a final investment decision then. That’s too late for us. We have got customers taking final investment decisions much earlier,” Mundy added. “Let’s get going.”

NuScale’s rivals in the race include GE Hitachi, also of the US, and Rolls-Royce, which wants to win an order in its home market. TerraPower, a start-up founded and chaired by Bill Gates, has also indicated that it wants to build nuclear projects in the UK. It has a type of SMR called an advanced modular reactor (AMR) in development.

NuScale was founded in 2007 as a university spin-out and listed on the Nasdaq exchange in 2022 under the ticker “SMR”. It has a market capitalisation of $1.7 billion (£1.4 billion). The US Department of Energy awarded it more than $1 billion in 2020 to build an SMR demonstration plant in Idaho, which it hopes to have operational by 2030.

Last month, NuScale won further funding from the Biden administration to advance plans to build an SMR in Romania.