How long would a government minister last who accepted the plea for “fast-track licensing” and “reduced regulation”? This is shorthand for lowering safety standards in the face of the industry’s track record of occasional but enormous disasters.

Rolls Royce has been building small reactors for submarines since 1965.

These “subsidies” are tiny in magnitude, less than one cent (pence?) per kW-hr. Subsidies given to renewables are vastly larger. (Hinkley’s strike price subsidy is as well, it’s similar to those given to renewables.) Then there are outright mandates for renewables, which are essentially an infinite subsidy. A level playing field is indeed called for.

Britain is clearly technically capable of building those small reactors (or could quickly develop the capability). The question is whether they could build them at a cost competitive with other places like China. Due to its cheaper labor, and other factors, countries like China have become “the world’s factory floor”. Small reactors could be built in a low cost country and be shipped all over the world for deployment. (That being the economic model for many consumer/industrial products.) It is one of the main reasons why small modular reactors offer hope of economically competitive nuclear. Indeed, it was Chinese manufacturing that was responsible for the great drop in solar panel prices. Perhaps it could do the same with modular reactors.