Rolls Royce SMR shortlists UK sites for its first factory

This factory will manufacture the 'heavy vessels' for the company's Small Modular Reactor (SMR) power station.

The potential sites are: Sunderland, Newton Aycliffe in County Durham, Richmond in North Yorkshire, Deeside in Wales, Ferrybridge in West Yorkshire, Stallingborough in Greater Lincolnshire, and Carlisle in Cumbria. 

The shortlist was selected against a set of criteria and picked from more than 100 submissions from Local Enterprise Partnerships and development agencies.

Construction will begin once the company has the green light to build an SMR 'fleet' in the UK.

To reduce timescales and project risk, 90% of the SMR's will be built in factory conditions.

Two other factories will manufacture civils modules and mechanical electrical and plumbing (MEP) modules, which will be assembled into a 470MW nuclear power station onsite.

The company says that this is equivalent to more than 150 onshore wind turbines and can power a million homes.

Rolls-Royce SMR estimates the heavy-vessels factory to be around 23,000m² and create 200+ roles.