Carlisle has missed out on being the site for a major nuclear reactor factory.
The city’s Kingmoor Park was shortlisted by US firm Holtec for the site of a small modular reactor factory earlier this year.
Holtec GB’s manufacturing facility, which will contribute approximately £1.5billion in Gross Value Added (GVA) to the economy of the chosen location, including creating around 3,600 jobs in construction and up to 400 manufacturing jobs, once the factory is operational.
However, the firm has chosen a site in South Yorkshire instead.
Cumberland Council leader Mark Fryer has suggested the county’s lack of a devolved major could have contributed to Cumbria missing out.
He was speaking after a meeting of the authority’s nuclear issues board at the Civic Centre in Carlisle on Friday.
During the debate about the nuclear issues update report members were told that it had been announced that the US firm Holtec had decided to open the proposed facility in South Yorkshire instead.
Cllr Fryer said: “I am bitterly disappointed because of the amount of work by the partnership to bring Holtec to Carlisle.
“We were united in our approach with Holtec – business leaders, the local authority, and all the other parties that were involved through the Cumbria LEP.
“We haven’t got Holtec but that does not stop us from having the resolve to bring others into our area to develop it.
“I wonder, because of the position that we were in around financing and offering incentives, and, when we talked to Government about whether or not we could offer that type of incentive, that it’s gone to an area where there is a devolved mayor in place.”
Holtec, the world’s largest exporter of capital nuclear components, said it planned to build small modular reactors (SMRs) at the factory to serve the UK, European and Middle East markets.
The preferred site was chosen from a shortlist of 13 potential locations around the UK.
For more than 15 years Holtec Britain, which is a subsidiary of Holtec International, has been working at Sizewell B nuclear power station in Suffolk and has been in the UK for almost 30 years.
According to the firm, the South Yorkshire SMR factory would see at least 70% of materials, components and work carried out in the UK and £50 million would be invested into UK skills and training through the SMR Learning Academy.
Holtec currently employs more than 2,000 people globally and provides spent fuel storage and transport for 145 nuclear plants worldwide.
