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“Mini-nuclear power plants will be allowed almost anywhere outside built-up areas, as ministers relax planning rules to allow a “reawakening” of atomic electricity.

“Under plans to quadruple capacity in the next quarter of a century, ministers want a fleet of “small modular reactors” to be built across Britain alongside large power plants.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nucl ... -rv5qxhzg2

I’ve mixed feelings about this. On the one hand we’ve got a lot of experience building, running, maintaining and (possibly) decommissioning submarine sized nuclear reactors.

On the other hand these are still nuclear reactors

They will still be a lot more expensive than renewables, and with the rapid research in battery technology, it won't be long before wind and or solar with long term storage is also cheaper.

If this can be delivered more cheaply than wind/solar+ storage then I am in favour.
I suspect however that the planning process and the scale of enquires/studies/nimbyfests will render this slower and more expensive than renewables.
I would also only support this if design and manufacture was UK based and not reliant on russia, china, and other similar places.

Yeah I agree

Smaller modular reactors will by definition be smaller and be more of them for a given output. This will mean there are more nuclear sites for NIMBYs to complain about and be a security risk. What you with them after they are done I don't know? Both sides in the Cold war have them stored somewhere a lot of them still on the subs themselves. I think a few were even tipped off ships into a convenient ocean trench somewhere in the Arctic to get rid of 'em.

A lot of recent Uranium supplied to the West was from Russia so that's food for thought.

Yeah you’re right there about Uranium producers BDU

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... production