United Kingdom: Vilfi locations of the first nuclear power plant with future Rolls-Royce small modular reactors

Wylfa is located in North Wales and will be the site for the construction of three small modular reactor models developed by Rolls-Royce by the mid-2030s, according to GBE-N, which is tasked with identifying new locations and for large nuclear power plants

The UK government announced that the Wylfa site on the island of Anglesey, in North Wales, will host the first fleet of Rolls‑Royce’s small modular reactors (SMRs). The statement notes that the site, where a Magnox-type power plant once operated, will in the first phase receive three Rolls-Royce SMRs, with the potential to accommodate up to eight units.

This first project of its kind aims to create around 3,000 jobs during the peak of construction, with investments worth several billions of pounds by the mid-2030s, thereby renewing Wylfa’s strong nuclear heritage dating back to the 1960s.

The new state-owned company Great British Energy – Nuclear (GBE-N) will begin activities at the site as early as 2026, with the aim that SMRs at Wylfa will start delivering electricity to the grid by the mid-2030s.

Rolls-Royce SMR, designed as a small pressurized-water reactor with a power output of 470 MWe, will provide reliable baseload power for at least 60 years. Its key advantage is modularity: 90 percent of the reactor will be built in controlled factory conditions, which significantly reduces project risk and drastically shortens construction timelines.

Wylfa was the last and largest Magnox-designed power plant built in the United Kingdom, which was shut down in 2015. The site had long been planned for a new large project, Hitachi’s “Horizon Project,” which was cancelled in 2019 due to issues with its financial structure.

In March 2024, the UK government reached an agreement to purchase the Wylfa and Oldbury-on-Severn sites from Hitachi, marking the first time since the 1960s that the country has taken ownership of land for the construction of new nuclear power plants.

The UK government’s goal is to raise nuclear energy capacity to 24 gigawatts by 2050, combining traditional large-capacity reactors and small modular reactors, with support from both the governing party and the largest opposition party. In addition to selecting sites for the SMR, the government announced that the company GBE-N has been tasked with identifying new suitable locations for another large nuclear reactor project (similar in scale to Hinkley Point C or Sizewell C), which could provide energy equivalent to that used by about 6 million households. GBE-N will submit a report on potential locations, including those in Scotland, by autumn 2026.

However, Reuters notes one more thing: the site had previously been earmarked for the construction of a large-capacity nuclear power plant, Westinghouse’s AP1000 pressurized-water reactor, and adds that this move could, as Reuters puts it, “enrage” the United States.

And we add one more thing: Great Britain plans to base its energy future on a combination of using large-capacity reactors such as the EPRs at Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C (each rated at 1,650 megawatts) and broader deployment of small modular reactors for which Rolls-Royce SMR has been chosen for development. The design of this company, however, exists only on paper; there is no tested model and there is not yet a “prototype” of this model. Additionally, small modular reactors are likely in the future to have a very specific application—in relatively isolated communities—so we are not sure that choosing this reactor design is the wisest.

After all, Britain is also known for a whole string of poor decisions in this industry, dating back to the 1950s when it was among the first to begin developing nuclear energy for the aforementioned Magnox reactors.