County strength in face of energy

Author
Ian Mean
Director of Business West Gloucestershire | Business West
17th January 2023

I make no apology for continuing to promote Gloucestershire’s credentials in the face  of the UK’s desperate race for new energy sources. My enthusiasm has been increased by the visit last week to the decommissioned nuclear sites at Berkeley and Oldbury by a senior team from Rolls-Royce SMR.

They are the experts looking for suitable sites for their mini reactors-SMRs. Each of these Small Modular Reactors is about the size of three football pitches.

The visit to Berkeley and Oldbury follows an announcement last year where Rolls-Royce prioritised its first four sites which have the potential to host 15GW of new nuclear power.

The team met councillors and senior officials from the Western Gateway partnership and GFirstLEP. Councillor Toby Savage, vice chair of the Western Gateway said: ”It is great to see continued interest in our sites at Oldbury and Berkeley.

“Our area has a long history of expertise in pioneering new forms of energy generation and it was good to be able to demonstrate this to our guests from Rolls-Royce SMR”.

I understand that Berkeley may have the potential for 4-6 SMRs and about 4 at Oldbury. And I also understand that the Rolls-Royce team were very impressed by South Gloucestershire and Stroud College’s campus at Berkeley.

Berkeley and Oldbury lost out in Western Gateway’s Severn Edge bid to establish the UK’s first Fusion plant. We have never been told why it went to Nottingham. Politics and Levelling Up may have played a part in the government decision , of course.

My personal  view is that this region now deserves to get an economic shot in the arm by siting these new Rolls-Royce SMRs on sites which seem to have all the advantages plus the nuclear heritage and support from our communities and politicians.

Now, the government needs to put its foot hard on the accelerator to fund this first fleet of mini nuclear reactors.

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