By Rhodri Morgan
UK nuclear start-up Newcleo has dropped plans to build mini nuclear power plants in its home country and will develop the project in France instead.
According to a report in The Telegraph, the company, which is headquartered in London and in the middle of an £860m fundraising round, had planned to launch an advanced module reactor (AMR) in the UK.
But French president Emmanuel Macron reportedly personally lobbied Newcleo’s chief executive Stefano Buono to bring the project to France, already established as one of the world’s leading nuclear markets.
Newcleo has never received an invitation to such a meeting with a British prime minister, The Telegraph added.
The site would have made use of the world’s largest plutonium stockpile, held at the UK’s Sellafield plant in Cumbria, through a new £2bn waste processing factory creating 500 new jobs.
But the plans were dropped after the government’s nuclear roadmap, released earlier this month, ruled out private companies accessing the Sellafield depositories.
Instead, Newcleo is planning a larger development than the planned UK site in the south of France, at a roughly £4bn price tag creating 1000 jobs.
The company will buy nuclear waste from the French state energy giant EDF.
Asked if the move was indicative of a wider company exodus to France, a spokesperson for the firm said Newcleo remained fully committed to developing its small module reactor (SMR) projects in the UK.
This despite the fact the government blocked Newcleo’s application to join the UK’s design competition for the projects, which counts among its would-be developers France’s EDF, US-Japanese alliance GE-Hitachi, Rolls-Royce and US companies such as Holtec and Westinghouse.
In 2023, power produced from nuclear stations in the UK sank to a 40-year low and the sector has been openly sceptical of the government’s recent roadmap that looks to develop a new enormous project, equivalent to Hinkley Point C, within a short time frame.
