The UK nuclear sector has gained significant momentum and public attention over the past eighteen months. Sizewell C finally reached a positive final investment decision, Great British Energy – Nuclear (GBE-N) signed a firm contract with Rolls-Royce SMR in April 2026 to build three reactors at Wylfa, and the National Wealth Fund has committed up to £599 million to back the technology’s development. On the face of it, this is momentum the sector has waited a generation for.
However, behind these headlines, the reality of delivery is much less rosy. The pace at which the UK procures nuclear capability, selects programme partners, structures contracts and eventually reaches delivery remains fundamentally out of step with the urgency of the 2050 Net Zero deadline.
The Timeline Problem
Rolls-Royce SMR was named the UK’s preferred SMR technology supplier in June 2025, but it still took ten months to convert that selection into a firm contract, with a further Technical Partner contract, worth an estimated £359 million, established in May 2026. Similarly, GBE-N has only recently concluded tendering for a separate £1.08 billion delivery partner contract that could run until 2046. In effect, one reactor programme at one site has required three major procurement exercises, each with its own selection, evaluation and contracting cycle, largely stacked sequentially rather than run in parallel.
Large-scale new build shows the same pattern. Hinkley Point C has risen from an original estimated cost of ~£18 billion to ~£35 billion, with full operation now expected in 2030 rather than 2025. Sizewell C’s consent process was also delayed for years before construction could properly begin.
The issue is not the capability of the teams delivering these programmes, but the constraints of a system that still moves too slowly for the scale and urgency of Net Zero.
What’s The Hold Up?
From our experience in Nuclear procurement, the delay rarely comes from a single point of failure. It comes from the accumulation of requirements being treated as single entities that are sourced individually via a procurement strategy that doesn’t consider the looming Net Zero deadline. Here are some thoughts on why these situations may occur:
- Sequential, rather than parallel, contracting – A major time-saving opportunity arises when contracting organisations swap tunnel vision of an immediate requirement, for a more strategic, ‘zoomed-out’ view of what the organisational core objectives dictate need to be procured. Topics like technology selection, technical partnership, delivery partnership and site-specific design routinely happen one after another rather than concurrently, despite their being limited dependencies between them. So why not procure in unison?
- Underdeveloped supply chain readiness – Tier 2 and 3 suppliers are frequently engaged only after prime contracts are signed, rather than being pre-qualified and capacity-planned in parallel with the main procurement. Giving the prime’s supplier base a heads-up on the upcoming tender opportunity enables a slicker transition to contract mobilisation upon award.
- Repeat procurements of similar capability – Every new programme tends to re-run market engagement and evaluation processes from first principles, rather than drawing on standing frameworks or panels that could compress cycle times materially.
What Would Move The Needle?
Our work across the Nuclear industry points to the same answer – procurement needs to be treated as a strategic delivery lever rather than a mandatory compliance task. If the UK nuclear programmes want to move at the pace Net Zero demands, the sector needs to design procurement models that compress timelines, create repeatability and bring the supply chain into the process much earlier.
- Move from one-off procurements to repeatable delivery models – Standing delivery partner frameworks, pre-competed panels or modular commercial routes could allow large programmes to source capability quickly, rather than restarting bespoke procurements from square one each time. Whilst maintaining scrutiny, repeatable delivery models break the pattern that every new programme needs to do its own market engagement, evaluation and contract set-up, when it can carry forward learnings from past experience.
- Procure connected requirements in parallel – Where dependencies are limited, bundling together connected requirements should be planned as an integrated procurement pipeline rather than a series of disconnected competitions. This cuts generic administration time. and helps contracting authorities identify which activities can safely run concurrently and where decisions genuinely need to be sequential.
- Build supply chain readiness before contract award – Tier 2 and 3 suppliers should be identified, pre-qualified and capacity-planned alongside the main procurement, not after the prime contract has been signed. Earlier visibility of future demand enables suppliers to be more prepared for mobilisation, as well as providing confidence to appropriately invest in skills, facilities and manufacturing capacity.
- Future-proof Procurement model design – Our Commercial transformation work across the STEP programme tells us that Fusion has vastly different technical, commercial and delivery uncertainties to fission SMRs. If the procurement models being built for today’s programmes are simply inherited by fusion, the same bottlenecks will reappear with a different technology label attached. Commercial models need to be flexible enough to support emerging technologies and not just repeat existing routes.
Moving From Ambition To Delivery
Throughout the Nuclear organisations we’ve worked with, from UKFE to Sellafield, everyone wants their procurement process to be faster. Slow procurement delays more than just signing contracts and suppliers getting paid; it delays site mobilisation, supplier investment, skills development and, ultimately, when low-carbon power reaches the grid for everyone to use. In a sector where technology timelines, investor confidence and public policy are all moving quickly, procurement models that remain linear, bespoke and heavily sequential risk becoming the bottleneck to delivery.
Nuclear technology is moving from Concept to Deployment. Procurement models need to evolve to keep pace with the technology, and become an enabler of programme delivery.
GET IN TOUCH WITH OUR TEAM TODAY
If your organisation is looking to optimise its nuclear procurement processes, or is considering a wider transformation exercise, don’t hesitate to get in touch with one of our team today: Darren Blackburn, Jonathan Williams or Will Gibbs
