Public naming contest launched for UK's first SMR plant at Wylfa

Great British Energy - Nuclear has turned Wylfa’s first small modular reactor plant into a local naming contest, asking Anglesey residents to help shape the identity of a project that could become the UK’s first SMR site. The exercise is an early test of whether the island sees the scheme as a national programme landing on local ground, or as something that can be claimed as part of Ynys Môn’s own story.

Entries opened on 14 May and close at 5pm on Monday 8 June 2026. The company wants names that are easy to pronounce, welcoming, inclusive and rooted in Anglesey’s heritage, landscape or language, while also avoiding anything already in common use for other energy projects. The invitation was issued in Welsh and English, and schoolchildren and young people were explicitly encouraged to take part. Suggestions will be reviewed by a panel made up of local young people, community leaders and industry representatives, with the winning name due soon after the deadline.

The naming push comes as Wylfa moves from policy promise to delivery. The UK government selected the site in November 2025 as the home of the country’s first SMRs, after Rolls-Royce SMR was chosen in June 2025 as the preferred technology. In April 2026, Great British Energy - Nuclear and Rolls-Royce SMR signed a contract that allows work to begin immediately on the first three units, including site-specific design, regulatory engagement and planning.

The plant is planned around Rolls-Royce SMR’s 470 MWe design, a small pressurised water reactor expected to provide baseload power for at least 60 years. About 90 percent of the hardware is intended to be built in factory conditions before assembly on site, a model intended to cut risk and shorten construction. The government has already set aside GBP2.6 billion in the 2025 Spending Review to back the programme, while the National Wealth Fund has committed up to GBP599 million to support reactor design development. The initial plan is for three units at Wylfa, with scope for as many as eight on the site.

For Anglesey, the contest lands after years of false starts. The original Wylfa station began commercial operation in November 1971 and January 1972, with Unit 2 closing in April 2012 and Unit 1 following in December 2015. Fuel removal was completed in September 2019, and Hitachi’s Wylfa Newydd plan was abandoned in 2020. Welsh ministers said the Wylfa choice recognised the area’s strong nuclear heritage and expertise, while Isle of Anglesey County Council has welcomed the project and kept the focus on local benefits, the Welsh language and meaningful public engagement.

The naming contest is small compared with the buildout ahead, but it is the first visible point where the plant meets the community that will live with it. If Wylfa is going to become more than another failed nuclear prospect on the map of North Wales, the identity chosen now will need to travel with the concrete, the cranes and the first three SMRs.