Rachel Reeves’ wealth fund pumps £600m into Rolls-Royce SMR
Rachel Reeves’ flagship wealth fund has announced a fresh heap of financing for Rolls-Royce SMR following its tie-up with Ed Miliband’s state-owned energy company.
The National Wealth Fund has revealed a £599m financing package for Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactors (SMR) in a bid to kick start delivery on its project with Great British Energy.
The partnership will see the creation of the UK’s first small modular reactors as part of the government’s drive for clean energy.
Small modular reactors are designed to produce up to about one-third the electricity of conventional reactors. Developers argue that small reactors can be constructed more quickly and cost-effectively than larger power reactors, with scalability to meet specific local demands.
Some interesting political language here such as "Rachel Reeves’ flagship wealth fund" plus "tie-up with Ed Miliband’s state-owned energy company" and "part of the government’s drive for clean energy".
Maybe someone has joined the dots for Team Reeves while Keir Starmer still whizzes around the international circuit trying to get someone to notice him.
There won't be any admission that Ed Miliband and Net Zero are both absurd, not yet, but the language has an entertaining touch of lessons learned.
8 comments:
I grew up near an "atomic" power station (as we called them then). I remember being taken to the first open day for the public. Utterly fascinating.
A bit before that I can remember my father's account of how impressive it was to stand inside one of the cooling towers. Later, in my own career, I found that colleagues referred to cooling towers as showing "the Tardis effect". From the outside they looked big: from the inside they looked bloody enormous.
This is actually the sort of thing the government should be throwing money at. If RR can nail the SMR concept it could be a massive plus for the country, providing both cheap energy and export earnings. Far better to waste taxpayers money on a bet like this, than pay layabouts to sit at home pretending to have 'anxiety' or the like. That'll never have a positive return, SMRs could well do.
I worked at Sellafield for 22 years and could never understand the opposition to nuclear energy. I have never been able to understand the rush to shut down and demolish a reliable power source like nuclear in favour of windmills with all the problems of fluctuating supply and having to feed power to the grid in dribbles.
All I can remember about Dungeness, was the filter bringing in sea water for cooling everything...
It was just a concrete pit, full of dead fish... Reminds me now of the HoC!
Even when (if) nuclear power is widespread we will still need some fossils fuels as feedstock for chemical processes.
I can't help wondering if the recent monstering of 'plastics' is an opening move in denigrating fossil fuels later.
dearieme - ah yes, "atoms" and "atomic" were everywhere at one time. Power too cheap to meter. Cooling towers certainly look big from the outside, they can be visible for miles in the right landscape.
Sobers - it is the sort of thing the government should be throwing money at, if nothing else it shows an interest in the real world rather than scams.
John - I don't understand it either. It has been obvious for decades that a country like ours should go nuclear. Subsidising wind in the way we do is unambiguously insane.
Scrobs - "It was just a concrete pit, full of dead fish... Reminds me now of the HoC!"
Ha ha - were they poached?
DJ - yes we need the feedstock for all kinds of things and you may be right about the motives driving anti-plastic propaganda. We need bitumen to make tarmac to fill all those potholes too.
"We need bitumen to make tarmac to fill all those potholes"
It would be useful and environment-friendly to put in a base layer of politicians.
Jannie - Starmer is a bit squishy though, he might stamp down to virtually nothing.
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