BBC video: UK Government announce Wylfa site on Anglesey has been chosen for country’s first small modular reactors (SMRs)

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Watch BBC video: UK Government announce Wylfa site on Anglesey has been chosen for country’s first small modular reactors (SMRs) - Tindle News on Dailymotion

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00:00Anglesey has a long history of providing nuclear power, but it's ten years since the old plant

00:06at Wilver was switched off, while plans for a replacement fell through.

00:11Now though, confirmation the industry is set to play a part in the island's future.

00:18Local college students were first to hear the news as the Prime Minister visited Colleg

00:22Menai in Llangevny this lunchtime.

00:24This is probably the biggest announcement for a generation, I think, here, and these

00:31are not jobs that are going to last one year or two years or three years, as some projects

00:36are.

00:37These are jobs that are going to be there for decades to come.

00:39We know you've been through disappointment before.

00:42We know you've been led up the hill and nothing has come from it.

00:47That is changing today, and I'm delighted that Keir Starmer and his team have put their

00:54faith in the people of Anglesey and in the people of Wales to deliver the first generation

01:02of small modular reactors.

01:04Not an average day at college for these students then, but a significant one perhaps for their

01:11futures.

01:12I think it's amazing that we have the opportunity to stay on Anglesey now to do engineering, especially

01:17that it's already there and the amount of opportunities that people before us have had to keep going

01:21there.

01:22The development of these apprenticeships within the area is going to be amazing.

01:26I think a lot of careers are taken out of Wales, as the PM mentioned, and I think this

01:31development is definitely going to bring work back into Wales.

01:34The Wilva site's been chosen to host the UK's first small modular reactors, a new type of

01:40nuclear plant put together from factory built components.

01:44The idea is that in the long run they'll be faster and cheaper to deploy than traditional

01:48power stations.

01:49They're smaller.

01:50They're around about 600 megawatts, which is about half the size of a traditional average

01:54size big gigawatt plant.

01:56Modular means they're built in modules.

01:58And these modules don't have to be built at Wilva.

02:00They can be built around the country, around the world and be brought to site to be plugged

02:03together like a bit of a Lego set and then turned on after that.

02:06So that's the real key thing.

02:08And the reactor part is actually quite boring.

02:10It's a very old technology.

02:11It's pressurized water reactors.

02:12It's just boiling water and turning it into electricity.

02:16And that's what we're using.

02:17So it's old technology done in a really exciting new way.

02:19The UK government and the firm designing these new reactors, Rolls-Royce, are promising over

02:243,000 jobs on this project during construction and hundreds then of permanent positions running

02:31the new plant for decades to come.

02:34Ministers are putting in over £2.5 billion into this scheme.

02:37It's been described as one of the largest public investments in Welsh history.

02:42It's got cross-party support for nuclear.

02:44Nuclear is an essential part of the energy security mix and creating stability for our

02:49energy grid and getting the cost down.

02:51So this is a long-term project and it's got support.

02:54So, yeah, I'm totally confident this is going to go ahead.

02:58Opponents say the SMRs are unproven technology and make the point that plans for a long-term storage

03:03facility for the UK's nuclear waste are yet to be agreed.

03:08It's a highly risky strategy to put so much faith in nuclear power going forward.

03:15And the obvious answer is renewable energy technologies.

03:22They're mature, they're much cheaper, they're much quicker to build and they make a meaningful

03:28contribution to combating climate change.

03:31While the announcement has been warmly welcomed by the nuclear industry, the Unite Union and

03:36the US ambassador to the UK say ministers should have opted for a large-scale power station

03:42instead.

03:43Criticism shared by the Conservatives.

03:45I think the community will really welcome these opportunities, but I think the UK Labour

03:50government, though, talking about a 10-year renewal and change, this is somewhat of a short-sighted

03:57decision of doing something smaller.

03:59It is welcome to see SMRs in Wales, of course, but we would have loved to have seen the larger

04:05opportunity taken.

04:06The SMRs still need regulatory approval.

04:09There's the planning process to go through, factories to be built and a workforce trained

04:13up.

04:14But the government says it hopes work to prepare the site can start next year, with the new

04:19reactors up and running by the mid-2030s.

04:21AMBASSADOR

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