Rishi Sunak is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (U.K.). He says that Wylfa, on Anglesey, will be named as one of the preferred sites for a new nuclear power station within months. He called it a “fantastic site” that could host both small modular reactors (SMRs) and big conventional reactors. Sunak said, “Wylfa is somewhere that could do both" He added that the preferred sites would be announced later this year.
Sunak called SMRs the “nuclear technologies of the future.” They are nuclear fission reactors that produce less than three hundred megawatts of electricity. It has been claimed that they will be cheaper and safer than old full-sized reactors.
The original Wylfa nuclear power setation stopped producing electricity in late 2015. Last year, the U.K. government launched its Energy Security Strategy. Wylfa was mentioned as one of the possible sites for new nuclear builds.
Sunak told a reporter that he was “committed to nuclear power in general because it is an important part of how we deliver energy security in the UK, but also how we decarbonize over time to get to net zero but in a proportionate and pragmatic way. Now Wylfa is a fantastic site because it can do both potentially giga-watt power but also could do small modular reactors. Without getting into too much of the specifics, later this year we will be announcing the sites for the next stage of our SMR process on small modular reactors. I can't say much more before then but obviously Wylfa is somewhere that could do both.”
Last may a report by the Welsh Affairs Committee urged U.K. ministers to show “more concrete commitment" to a new nuclear power station at Wylfa. The report warned that Hitachi’s cancelled bid to construct one in 2020 had “scars on the local community”.
Sunak made a passionate defense of the U.K. government’s deal with Tata to keep Port Talbot steelworks open which was announced earlier this month. The Port Talbot plant is the biggest steel plant in the U.K. It is slated to receive a subsidy of six hundred twelve million dollars from taxpayers to install an electric arc furnace to produce steel in a greener way. However, as many as three thousand jobs will be lost across the U.K., mainly in Port Talbot. Unions are calling the deal a “devastating blow for workers.”
Sunak said denied the charge that the plans were not ambitious enough. He said, “I think it is a very glass half empty way to look at it. That steel plant was facing compete closure - 8,000 jobs would have been lost, that's what people were worried about. What's happened here is that the government has stepped in, that's the UK government not the Welsh government, the UK government has stepped-in and provided an enormous amount of support to help that steel plant have a sustainable long-term future, producing clean steel and saving 5,000 jobs. That actually, compared to what the situation was, shows that the UK government is committed to the people of Wales, committed to steel-making and can look forward to a much more sustainable future for the plant and that area.”