Rolls-Royce Group has established a new business that will develop and make small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). Together with BNF Resources UK Limited and Exelon Generation Limited, the company will invest £195 million ($264 million) across a period of around three years to help the U.K. government implement its net zero strategy and 10 point plan.

The business, which will continue to seek further investment, will now proceed rapidly with a range of parallel delivery activities, including entry to the U.K. Generic Design Assessment process and identifying Source: Rolls-Royce Groupsites for the factories that will manufacture the modules that enable on-site assembly of the power plants.

Nine-tenths of an individual Rolls-Royce SMR power plant will be built or assembled in factory conditions and around 80% could be delivered by a U.K. supply chain. A single SMR power station will occupy the footprint of two football pitches and power approximately one million homes with the capacity to generate 47 MW of low-carbon energy, equivalent to more than 150 onshore wind turbines.

The SMR technology can support both on-grid electricity and a range of off-grid clean energy solutions, enabling the decarbonization of industrial processes and the production of clean fuels, such as sustainable aviation fuels and green hydrogen, to support the energy transition in the wider heat and transportation sectors.