South Yorkshire will host Britain’s first factory dedicated to building small modular reactors (SMRs), which will provide a significant boost to the region’s economy and the UK’s nuclear industry.
Holtec, a private nuclear company based in Florida, has chosen South Yorkshire as the preferred location for the £1.5 billion facility, after considering sites across the country, including in the West Midlands, Cumbria and Teesside.
The plant could create up to 3,000 high-tech jobs by manufacturing parts for SMRs – a technology that could become crucial to Britain’s planned nuclear revival. Holtec is investigating several locations across the county, including areas around the city of Doncaster.
Gareth Thomas, managing director of Holtec Britain, said: “Holtec Britain was impressed by the overwhelming interest in our new SMR factory in the UK and the strong support received from local authorities throughout our engagements. South Yorkshire overcame stiff competition from other parts of Britain to be our preferred location for our state-of-the-art SMR factory.”
The region offers practical advantages for Holtec, including proximity to Sheffield Forgemasters, a specialist in complex castings required for reactor casings, and a skilled workforce rooted in tough engineering traditions.
Oliver Coppard, Mayor of South Yorkshire, commented: “In South Yorkshire we are building on hundreds of years of innovation and engineering heritage to create world-leading facilities, skills and expertise today; assets that will drive the clean energy transition in Britain and beyond. We are at the intersection of the new nuclear, hydrogen and sustainable aviation sectors, and are proud to be home to the largest cleantech sector in the UK.”
SMRs are seen as a potential breakthrough in nuclear technology, aiming to reduce the cost and construction time of nuclear power plants. Unlike large reactors that are built from scratch on site, SMRs are built from modules manufactured in factories and assembled on site, making them cheaper and faster to produce at scale, according to proponents.
Holtec is one of five companies vying for government funding to build the country’s first SMRs, joining Rolls-Royce, Westinghouse, GE Hitachi and NuScale. Great British Nuclear, the government body that oversees competition, is expected to reduce the shortlist from five to four companies later this month. Two winners are expected to be selected and allocated sites to develop late this year or early 2025.