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Starmer’s nuclear revolution is about PowerPoints, not power

Government’s latest energy announcement is ‘going small as slowly as possible.

Another week and another lie from a government that only seems
capable of pulling defeat from the jaws of victory. Last week found Ed
Miliband, the Energy Secretary, trumpeting “the largest nuclear building
programme in Britain in half a century”.

But at the same time, the
Government is making promises to the people of North Wales – and to the
rest of the UK – that it can’t possibly fulfil. It will do nothing to
help us keep the lights on in 2030, after most of our existing nuclear
fleet has been shut down. “This isn’t ‘going big’ – it’s going
small as slowly as possible,” one industry source told me. “It’s
PowerPoints, not power,” one source fretted. The Government has approved
three new small modular nuclear reactors at the Wylfa site on Anglesey.

The implication is that spades will be in the ground very soon. But by choosing Rolls-Royce SMR, that cannot possibly happen. But Rolls-Royce was very late to the race and is trailing in the pack. Perhaps this will come as a surprise to some. But some of the coverage has been highly misleading.

Like this example: “Rolls-Royce is already world-leading when it comes to
making small modular reactors. It is just the ones they make currently go
into submarines,” Sam Dumitriu of the think tank Britain Remade told
readers of The Spectator last month. He’s the magazine’s go-to nuclear
expert.

Not only does Rolls-Royce not lead the world, being one of the last
to start its design process, but comparing military and civilian reactors
is like saying a horse is a slightly larger goldfish. They are completely
different creatures, adapted to different habitats.

Wylfa is the only site
in the UK that is currently licenced to accommodate a big, gigawatt-scale
reactor generating as much power as three SMR tiddlers. “Wylfa was our
best site for our next gigawatt nuclear plant, which is why I signed one
off there,” Claire Coutinho, the shadow energy secretary, told me.
“It’s big enough to do both small and large nuclear. It would be a huge
downgrade of ambition to only do small nuclear reactors there.”

 Telegraph 17th Nov 2025,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/11/17/starmers-nuclear-revolution-is-about-powerpoints-not-power/

November 21, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics