Sizewell C FID. UK nuclear's first material decade since the 1980s.

Sizewell C reached Final Investment Decision in 2025 and is now in construction under the Regulated Asset Base financing model. The National Wealth Fund commitment of £36.6 billion — separately quantified from the £27.8 billion core NWF capital, makes Sizewell C the single largest UK infrastructure investment commitment of the decade.

Hinkley Point C is approaching commissioning. Rolls-Royce SMR won the Great British Nuclear Small Modular Reactor competition, with GBE-Nuclear consolidated from GBN at Royal Assent on 16 May 2025 and a £2.5 billion GBE-Nuclear capital allocation.

This is the first material decade of UK nuclear new-build activity since the 1980s. The strategic question for the supply chain, for civil engineering firms, for nuclear-grade manufacturers and for the workforce is no longer whether new-build happens — it is how quickly the supply chain can scale and how the RAB financing template performs under sustained construction.

The RAB model is the most important regulatory innovation of the cycle. It spreads project risk across consumers, taxpayers and private investors during construction, reducing equity risk premium and material cost of capital.

The same model underpins water utilities (PR24, Gap 35) and electricity transmission (EGL + ASTI, Gap 11). If RAB delivers Sizewell C at materially lower cost of capital than the Hinkley Point C CfD model, the template is set for every gigawatt nuclear project that follows.

Wylfa (Anglesey) is next in pipeline, with AI Growth Zone North Wales adjacency. Bradwell (Essex) sits materially uncertain post UK-China policy reset. Rolls-Royce SMR is progressing GDA, with first deployment expected early 2030s.

GridteamAI's Gap 32 report, the Tranche 2 Renewables flagship, covers UK nuclear new-build end-to-end. The financing structure, the supply chain implications, the workforce trajectory under Clean Energy Jobs Plan, the nuclear-grade steel and UK forging capacity gap, AIGZ adjacency, and the cross-volume interactions with public finance (Gap 24), critical minerals (Gap 25) and workforce (Gap 26).