Great British Nuclear operation is launched

This week is very important for nuclear energy as the government launches its Great British Nuclear operation.

I hope the announcement will be a big boost for the Western Gateway’s Severn Edge project at Berkeley Green and Oldbury.

Readers of this column will remember how our local councils and all our county MPs really got behind the Severn Edge bid to government to develop a £200 million prototype fusion plant on the two former decommissioned nuclear sites at Berkeley and Oldbury.

Our bid for STEP-the Spherical Tokamak for Energy production-failed.

It will now be based at a former coal power station site in Nottingham.

In my view, politics played a part in where STEP was sited.

But we are not downhearted because we believe the Berkeley and Oldbury sites could have a major part to play in the UK’s new nuclear strategy.

They are being considered for the new small modular reactors—SMRs, which are being developed in the UK by Rolls Royce with worldwide competition.

These SMRs are around the size of three soccer pitches each, and at around £2 billion each are, of course, much cheaper than big power station builds.

And it’s good to see Stroud’s MP, Siobhan Baillie, backing the SMRs plan.

I noted what she wrote in last week’s Stroud News & Journal.

She said: “Nuclear is a big deal. I do not understand why it is not completely popular across absolutely everybody.

“It is a zero-emission clean-energy source that the environmentalists should be entirely pro. It backs up renewables too.”

Siobhan is so right.

Here in Gloucestershire, we have an enormous legacy of nuclear energy skills.

They are part of the industrial DNA of our county which is well and truly embedded and accepted as part of Gloucestershire’s heritage of energy innovation.

The government’s aptly named Great British Nuclear needs to recognise these skills and the support  of our local communities for nuclear energy here in one of this country’s scientific cradles where it has been developed over the years.