Wylfa nuclear power plant plans go ahead, creating Anglesey jobs

The first nuclear power station of its kind is to be built on Anglesey, bringing 3,000 jobs and billions of pounds of investment.

The plant at Wylfa, on the northern coast of the Welsh island, will house the UK’s first three small modular reactors (SMRs), although the site could potentially house up to eight.

Work is scheduled to begin next year with the goal of generating power by the mid-2030s.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said Britain was once the world leader in nuclear power, but “years of neglect and inertia have led to places like Anglesey being let down and left behind. Today, that has changed.”

The project, which could power around three million homes, will be built by publicly owned Great British Energy-Nuclear and is backed by a £2.5bn investment from the UK government.

Visiting a further education college in north Wales on Thursday, Sir Keir said the development would bring jobs for “decades to come” and that work would start “virtually immediately”.

First Minister of Wales Alunred Morgan said she was “pressing the case at every opportunity for the incredible benefits of WILFA”.

SMRs work similarly to large reactors, using nuclear reactions to generate heat that produces electricity – but are a fraction of the size, with about one-third the output.

Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband described the announcement as “exciting” and said Britain was in the race for new reactors.

Speaking on BBC Radio Wales Breakfast, Miliband said he hoped to “work with local colleges to make sure there are local skills providers, skills training opportunities, so that local people can get these jobs”.

Simon Bowen, chairman of Great British Energy-Nuclear, hailed the “landmark moment for the UK”.

Llinos Meady, MP for Ynys Mön, the Welsh name for Anglesey, said it was a “game-changer” for the area “but only if local people see real and lasting benefits”.

Mims Davies MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Wales, said it would bring much-needed jobs and investment but “the current scheme will only generate a fraction of the electricity that a gigawatt-powered plant would generate”.

Wales Green Party leader Anthony Slaughter said the project was “an expensive attempt to divert attention from the clean, fast and cheap renewable energy already available to us”.

He said “a rapid, ambitious implementation of solar, wind and wave energy that will create jobs and cut energy bills” was needed.

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) Wales said the plant would deliver a “once in a generation” boost to jobs, supply chains and regional infrastructure.

Great British Energy-Nuclear has also been tasked with identifying potential sites for another large-scale nuclear power plant across the UK, such as those being built at Hinkley Point in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk, which could power the equivalent of six million homes.

Officials said the company will report by autumn 2026.

It is unclear whether SMR schemes, which are smaller and more simple to build, will exclude Wylfa after it was named the preferred location in 2024 by the previous UK Conservative government.

Professor Simon Middleburg, director of the Nuclear Futures Institute at Bangor University, said the SMRs would be “built modularly in factories and shipped to site to be put together like an Ikea chair”.

“There are still a few more hurdles to overcome” – from securing regulatory approvals, building the factories needed to manufacture SMRs and training the workforce to run them, he cautioned.

Opponents of the project point to the fact that a long-term storage facility for Britain’s nuclear waste has still not been agreed and say investment in renewable energy schemes – wind, wave and tidal – is needed.

Dylan Morgan of the People Against Wilfa-B campaign group said the proposed SMR was an “unnecessarily large development of an unproven technology”.

The government sees them as a safe, reliable, economical and low-carbon energy system and is confident that, with investment, SMRs will create thousands of jobs and boost manufacturing.

With reactors designed by Rolls-Royce, Wilfa beat off competition from a site in Oldbury, Gloucestershire, subject to final contracts, which are expected later this year.

The UK government said the plant would help provide energy independence.

The decision to choose small modular reactors at Wilfa was criticized by US Ambassador Warren Stephens, who said he was “extremely disappointed”.

He had urged ministers to commit to the large-scale plant, with US firm Westinghouse reportedly presenting plans for a new gigawatt station at the site.

Downing Street said the decision to build a power station in Wales “does not close the door” to a US manufacturer working on a future project.

The old nuclear power plant at Wilfa was closed in 2015 and a previous plan for a large-scale replacement failed in 2021.

The company behind the scheme – Japanese industrial giant Hitachi – cited rising costs and failure to reach agreement with the UK government over funding.

The announcement has a big political component, with Labor’s leadership in Westminster keen to show it means business on big investment in infrastructure projects.

In Wales, the First Minister is pushing hard for Wulfa – and the announcement comes six months before the Senedd elections.

Alund Morgan is trying to strike a balance: separating the Welsh party from UK Labour, pushing for additional funding, further devolution of powers and big investment announcements from its UK allies.

She has certainly got the latter, although many other issues such as reforming the way Wales is funded and the transfer of the Crown Estate – which owns much of the Welsh coastline and is vital to future wind energy – remain unresolved.