U.S.-British Deal Would Speed Nuclear Plant Construction

Britain and the United States are expected to sign an agreement this week to help companies from one country to build nuclear projects in the other.

The British government is hopeful that reaching a deal with the United States will speed up what has, so far, been a halting effort to build nuclear plants in Britain. “Together with the U.S., we are building a golden age of nuclear,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a statement on Monday.

Mr. Starmer’s government favors construction of more nuclear plants despite their drawbacks. These facilities come with huge price tags and other risks, but they produce large volumes of steady energy with low emissions.

The industry’s advocates say that the benefits of having large domestic sources of power generation outweigh the negatives. “Replacing reliance on imports with domestic carbon-free power will contribute significantly to the U.K.’s energy security,” said Vincent C. Zabielski, a partner at the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in London who works on nuclear issues.

Building nuclear stations also creates jobs, an important consideration for the government, which is aligned with the trade unions. About 98,000 people already work in the industry in Britain, constructing, operating and decommissioning plants, according to the Nuclear Industry Association, a trade group.

Britain’s existing nuclear plants are gradually reaching the end of their lives, and the country is struggling to add new ones. The last nuclear station to be completed, Sizewell B in Suffolk, began generating electricity in 1995.

The government’s statement includes a number of early-stage nuclear deals, including a plan by X-Energy, an American firm, and Centrica, a British utility, to build up to 12 so-called advanced modular reactors at Hartlepool in North East England.

So far the most important aspect of the deal appears to be an effort to speed up the notoriously slow approval process for these projects by fast-tracking reviews of designs already approved in one jurisdiction.

For instance, a nuclear power station being built in western England called Hinkley Point C has encountered severe delays, partly because of thousands of required design changes from previous models of the same reactor built in Europe and China.

The deal with the United States, which is expected to be signed during President Trump’s state visit this week, aims to cut at least some of this red tape.

The government estimated that the change could cut licensing time to two years, from as long as four. Cutting red tape would be useful because costs on planned projects have run into billions of pounds before construction has even started.

“It’s really important because nuclear design assurance is incredibly expensive and incredibly cumbersome,” said Adam Bell, a former British government energy official and now director of policy at Stonehaven, a consulting firm.

If each country can accept regulatory signoffs from the other, he added, “that enables us both to deploy nuclear much more quickly.”

The government said the arrangement could help Rolls-Royce, the jet engine maker, speed up exports of the small modular nuclear reactor it is developing.