Britain and US to sign nuclear power pact during Trump’s visit

LONDON: Britain and the United States will sign a deal to work together on boosting nuclear power during US President Donald Trump’s state visit this week, the British government said, helping secure investment to fund new plants.

Britain’s government has launched a major push to expand nuclear power in recent months, pledging to invest 14 billion pounds ($19 billion) in a new plant at Sizewell C and advancing plans for a Rolls-Royce unit to build the country’s first small modular reactors (SMR).

Trump arrives in Britain for a two-day visit on Tuesday, during which he and Prime Minister Keir Starmer will announce the nuclear power tie-up.

The collaboration aims to speed up new projects and investments, including plans expected to be announced by US nuclear reactor company X-Energy and Britain’s Centrica to build up to 12 advanced modular reactors in northeast England.

An 11 billion pound ($15 billion) project to develop advanced data centres powered by SMRs in central England at the former Cottam coal-fired power station set to be announced by U.S. company Holtec International, France’s EDF and real estate partner Tritax, is also on the cards, the statement added.

“These major commitments set us well on course to a golden age of nuclear that will drive down household bills in the long run,” Starmer said on Monday.

Trump and Starmer discussed working more closely together on SMRs when they met at the U.S. president’s golf resort in Scotland in July.

“Today’s commercial deals set up a framework to unleash commercial access in both the U.S. and UK,” U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in the statement.

The new tie-up will cover nuclear regulation, meaning if a reactor passes safety checks in one country, the other can use the findings to support its own checks, cutting licensing time to two years from three to four years at present.

Commenting on its new partnership deal with X-Energy, Centrica’s Group CEO Chris O’Shea said it would build a resilient, affordable, low-carbon energy system, while X-Energy’s CEO J. Clay Sell said Hartlepool was the right place for it to scale its technology in Britain given its experienced workforce and local services.

Holtec chair and CEO Kris Singh said its plan with EDF would create thousands of local jobs while drawing on the lessons from its Palisades project in Michigan, while Simone Rossi, CEO of EDF in the UK, said the plan would benefit energy security.

In a related announcement, Rolls-Royce said it had entered the U.S. regulatory process for its SMR, paving the way for potential new jobs and investment in the US Among the other investments expected to be announced is a deal for UK-based Urenco to supply an advanced type of low-enriched uranium to the U.S. market.