The government has given the go ahead - and a commitment of funding - for Rolls-Royce to develop small modular nuclear reactors. Unlike 'traditional' nuclear power plants, these can be manufactured in factories and then transported to where they're needed, taking up only a footprint of around 2 football pitches.

Overall, I think this is very positive news. While long term the plan should be to move to renewables (and potentially fusion?) for energy supply, in the short term we do need a baseline source of energy while we build our capacity up. The track record of nuclear energy is (with a few rather significant and memorable exceptions) safe and clean, and so is clearly a better option than continued reliance on gas or coal.

The big negative is, of course, the nuclear waste - all waste products from the reactor are contaminated with long lived radioactive isotopes, and so need to be stored in secure facilities indefinitely (or disposed of using some rather controversial methods to the deep ocean, remote caves or even outer space!). As a challenge, this shouldn't be dismissed, but equally shouldn't be held to make nuclear energy unfeasible - the volume of waste produced is, realistically, quite small.

Outside of the scientific and environmental concerns, there are substantial economic benefits. Rolls-Royce are estimating an additional 40,000 jobs throughout the supply chain, and the project would utilise and enhance the substantial technical expertise we have in this area. As I have previously discussed, early investment in green technologies is a key way to mitigate the costs of the transition to net zero, and it is encouraging to see the government begin to make steps in that direction.