TheChek News Flow

The effort is expected to take about six months, meaning its results would come after the midterm elections

WASHINGTON—The Food and Drug Administration has launched a safety study of the abortion pill, also known as mifepristone, a step that could pave the way for the Trump administration to restrict how it is distributed and used.

The study marks a victory for antiabortion groups and Republican members of Congress, who have demanded action from the administration to crack down on the pill’s use. In recent months, antiabortion allies had lost patience with assurances from administration officials that a study would be conducted.

The effort is expected to take about six months, administration officials said, meaning it likely won’t be completed before the midterm elections. Some in the antiabortion movement had previously accused the administration of dragging its feet on the review to avoid political controversy before the elections, an allegation that both the White House and FDA have denied.

Some of the administration officials said the agency had been making preparations by acquiring data and examining whether a study was feasible. They said the administration had kicked the study into high gear because of conversations with antiabortion groups and a coming October deadline, set by a Louisiana judge this spring as part of ongoing litigation over the abortion pill. The administration is aiming for a robust study that will withstand legal criticism, the administration officials said.

The FDA website currently says that mifepristone, approved decades ago, is safe to use as indicated. It is unlikely the FDA would aim to remove the drug from the market entirely, as removing any drug from the market is highly difficult. Antiabortion advocates have instead set their sights on the agency changing its rules that allow the drug to be distributed through the mail and via telehealth.

“We already know chemical abortions kill babies and endanger women,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.), chairman of the Senate’s health committee. “The Trump administration needs to stop dragging their feet and immediately reinstate the in-person requirement.”

Antiabortion advocates have alleged telehealth distribution of mifepristone has led to misuses of the medication and harmful health outcomes for women, including hemorrhaging. During the pandemic, the pills were first allowed to be prescribed virtually and shipped in the mail. After the Supreme Court’s decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, virtual prescribing ballooned. Doctors in blue states shipped the pills to red states where abortions face more restrictions.

Abortion-rights groups have said the pills are safe, and that the concerns about the pill’s telehealth distribution are a veiled attempt at rolling back access to the drugs. About 65% of abortions in the U.S. use the mifepristone pill regimen, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Studies have repeatedly shown that mifepristone is safe, including when prescribed remotely and taken at home. Antiabortion groups say those studies are flawed and that the federal government doesn’t closely track serious, nonfatal side effects.

“Hopefully they will adhere to FDA’s gold standard for science and we will learn once again that mifepristone is a safe and effective medicine, and the telehealth model of care is also safe and effective,” said Kirsten Moore, director of the Expanding Medication Abortion Access Project.

Former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, ousted last month, had promised lawmakers he would launch a mifepristone study but told others in the administration that he needed new data systems for the effort. The current study is using existing drug-safety surveillance systems at the agency, according to the administration officials.

The study launch was initiated by FDA leaders but has the White House’s blessing, people familiar with the matter said. In addition to the FDA study using the agency’s own drug safety systems, the agency is also considering hiring a contractor to acquire and analyze data on mifepristone use, the administration officials said.

Some of the administration officials said they hope to have results from the study by the end of the year. They said they also expect to have preliminary, internal results from the study in July and plan to give an update to the Louisiana court by the October deadline. They said a separate court ruling legally obligated them to examine both the drug’s current telehealth rules and earlier, stricter protocols.

During the 2024 campaign and continuing into the administration, the Trump team embraced a strategy of allowing states to determine their own abortion policies—a philosophy that has come under fire from antiabortion groups that want the federal government to more closely regulate the abortion pill. White House officials recently met with representatives from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the groups critical of the administration’s stance.

Earlier this spring, the Supreme Court decided to maintain widespread access to mifepristone during ongoing litigation over the pill. A lower court in Louisiana also required the FDA to give an update by October on a promised review of the safety regulations governing mifepristone.

In the days following Makary’s departure, acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas called leaders in the antiabortion movement to reassure them he was committed to their cause despite previous legal work for Planned Parenthood. According to a public calendar entry, he also met in May with Cassidy, who has pushed the FDA to do the safety study.

Trump has yet to nominate a replacement for Makary, though the options have been narrowed to a shortlist, people familiar with the matter said. Diamantas has told others that he doesn’t want the job, according to people familiar with the conversations.

It is unclear if the FDA’s study will be enough to appease antiabortion groups critical of the administration.

Commercial satellite imagery, sent straight to soldiers’ phones, is speeding up the kill chain and causing new problems for Russian forces

The small unit of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, stationed about 10 kilometers from the front line in the country’s southeast, knew there was something afoot in a building obscured by thick tree cover. The spring foliage hid its outline but not the signals from the electronic devices within.

The team launched a reconnaissance drone, which couldn’t see much through the trees. But the soldiers had another card to play: high-definition, near-real-time images taken by commercial satellites, delivered directly to their phones, tablets and laptops.

The satellite sensors showed the thick, metal frames of armored vehicles—the type used by senior Russian military officials—parked around the building. After three days of surveilling the site from orbit, the unit determined it was a Russian meeting spot for planning operations, members said. Then they struck the building and vehicles with an attack drone, one of the members said.

“It was good work,” he said. “We made problems for our enemy.”

Over the past six months, during small-team missions to test the technology, images from commercial satellites operated by Colorado-based Vantor have improved the speed and precision of Ukraine’s drone attacks. The rapid delivery to soldiers of geospatial intelligence has shortened by as much as 90% the time it takes to locate and strike Russian assets, according to the technology providers and people involved in the missions. Augmenting the images is software that lets users identify and investigate targets in detail.

In this grinding war now well into its fifth year, Ukraine continues to spark new and unexpected technology innovation that its weary military hopes might provide an edge against the Russians. After a brutal winter, Ukraine has emerged this spring with a tactical and technological advantage over Russia. Part of that is being driven by Ukraine’s improvements in midrange strikes on Russia’s logistics hubs, warehouses and air defenses. Using faster, more accurate satellite imagery to guide strikes is part of Ukraine’s strategy for launching more precise attacks from a distance.

The Ukrainian military’s deployment of the program marks the first known instance of unclassified, commercial satellite imagery going directly to a soldier to guide real-time battle decisions, according to the companies and military analysts. The same satellites used to monitor illegal fishing and update Google Maps have found a new and deadly application.

The technology is a trans-Atlantic collaboration between Vantor, Dutch geospatial intelligence company Bravo1Alpha, U.S.-based Persistent Systems and Ukrainian defense firm Burevii.

The Ukrainian involved in the strike on the Russian planning site said the new technology helps preserve Kyiv’s two scarcest assets: “It is money, it is time,” he said. With access to the satellite images, his team didn’t have to rely on surveillance drones that can be expensive and are more easily jammed or shot down by the Russians.

During a springtime mission, called Starfall II, a Ukrainian unit spent 2½ weeks destroying billions of dollars in Russian assets. Among the targets was a Russian ammunition depot in occupied Ukraine that soldiers had identified after pulling a satellite image of the structures, which had once been used to store grain, members of the team said. Comparing the new image with older photos of the property dating back to before the Russian invasion, soldiers identified changes that convinced them it was no longer an agricultural operation and spotted fresh tire tracks that were consistent with military vehicles unloading ammunition. Members of Ukraine’s Brigade 422, a midrange strike team, dispatched attack drones.

“Every ammunition depot you destroy is at least a couple of Ukrainian soldiers’ lives you save,” said one member of the operation, a technical adviser assisting the armed forces.

The satellite intelligence has allowed them to do within hours what used to require weeks, either because of a lag in getting intelligence out to the front, or the relative slowness of launching a drone and waiting for it to survey large areas, often made slower by fog or snow.

“Compressing the sensor-to-shooter cycle is the defining trend of this war at the tactical level,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, a military analyst and founder of defense advisory firm Gady Consulting.

As with every technology, satellites have their limitations: They are not particularly helpful on days of thick cloud cover, which is much of the winter in Ukraine, and can’t loiter over a moving target.

Satellite imagery itself is nothing new in war. Commercial and government satellite operators have long been key intelligence sources. Vantor published satellite images of Russian tanks and troops in position near the border of Ukraine before the war began. Ukraine has been heavily dependent on U.S. intelligence sources to conduct strikes.

Vantor’s push into defense helped it reach $900 million in annual recurring revenue last year, when the company, which is owned by private equity, also added more than 10 European defense and intelligence customers. Part of what those agencies are seeking, Vantor said, is the capability now being used by Ukraine.

Vantor’s images go directly from the satellite to the soldier’s tablet, phone or laptop in as little as 15 minutes, bypassing a centralized review in Kyiv that has tended to slow down the flow of intelligence to the front line by hours or days.

One Ukrainian fighter said intelligence received from human sources on the location of Russian targets required at least two days of review time in Kyiv. A former soldier in Ukraine said geospatial intelligence was sometimes so stale by the time it reached the units at the front line, soldiers couldn’t act on it. Military analysts say the turf war over access to satellite images between Ukraine’s government and military branches has hindered the dissemination of intelligence.

The press office for the Armed Forces of Ukraine declined to comment. The military intelligence unit didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Vantor software allows soldiers to compare a current satellite image with historical images, as Brigade 422 did with the ammunition depot, and see infrastructure changes or movement. Artificial intelligence monitors large areas and detects when a target shifts. The software generates 3-D renderings that soldiers can use to simulate the best flight path for a drone.

Vantor’s 10 satellites cover 7 million square kilometers of Earth a day, hitting any one point on the globe 12 to 15 times, said Will Cocos, Vantor’s chief transformation officer and a former Navy SEAL. Typically, the coordinates on Vantor’s images are within 5 meters (16 feet) of an object’s real position, plenty accurate for a 50-kilogram (110-pound) explosive, the Ukrainian users said.

Ukraine is now previewing for much of the West what’s possible when the chain of intelligence gets compressed, said intelligence analysts. U.S. Special Operations Command last year added new software to provide near-real-time commercial satellite images on soldiers’ mobile devices, a Socom spokeswoman said.

Army spokesman Maj. Sean Minton said the service doesn’t yet send satellite intelligence directly to soldiers’ devices, but is working toward it through a broader effort to create a high-speed information system that gives soldiers of all ranks access to satellite data “free from headquarters reviews.”

Removing some of these intermediaries responsible for vetting might speed things up, but it also raises the risks that soldiers get wrong information—and act on it, said Nand Mulchandani, former chief technology officer for the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Department’s artificial intelligence office.

“There are processes in place that slow things down, but there are processes in place for a reason,” Mulchandani said.

Drivers say 2026 changes demanded counterintuitive driving and pose safety risk

Some spectacular driver battles in the early 2026 races, more overtaking and higher television viewing figures cannot disguise the troubled birth of Formula 1’s new rules era.

Senior figures have gone out of their way to focus on the positives of the new regulations brought in for this season, but one of their fundamental pillars is already being abandoned.

With just five races run ahead of this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix, a path has been mapped out to move away from the approximately 50:50 split between combustion engines and batteries that was at the core of the new rules. The FIA, the governing body, hopes to accomplish this as soon as the 2027 season.

Longer term, F1 is also looking to get rid of the current V6 turbo hybrids entirely. Old-school screaming V8s are coming back by 2031 at the latest, with F1 chiefs believing that using sustainable fuels will allow grand prix racing to return to simpler and cheaper engines.

The much-championed 50:50 power split came about as a means of attracting new manufacturers because of increased electrification, which is in line with wider motor industry trends. It did its job in bringing Audi and Cadillac on board and helped convince Honda to abandon an exit from the sport.

But the compromises needed to make the bigger electrical element work proved too much — and were not enough to prevent the cars being starved of energy or drivers left frustrated. Batteries too quickly running out of power resulted in dramatic drop-offs in speed on the straights, an outcome that world champion Lando Norris says “hurts your soul” as a driver.

Counterintuitive driving was also necessary in order to be quick overall. Drivers had to go into corners more slowly to harvest more energy from lifting off the throttle or braking to charge their batteries so they would have extra power available to go faster down the straights.

One of the most outspoken critics was four-time world champion Max Verstappen, who hinted that he had toyed with walking away from F1, such is his dislike of the new cars. “It’s not nice the way you have to race,” he said early in the season. “It’s really anti-driving.”

Despite the criticisms, early grands prix left opinion divided because the action was not all terrible. The races have been entertaining, as the varying speed differences between cars with and without battery power triggered a new style of overtaking, with drivers passing and repassing each other several times per lap. This has been nicknamed “yo-yo” racing, although many purists see it as artificial.

TV viewership from the early races showed that fans were tuning in too, with increases in numbers according to analysis of F1’s main territories.

Yet sections of the F1 audience did not like the changes, while drivers remained unhappy about some aspects and lobbied for change. Some of the concerns were related to safety issues, and these were addressed quickly.

Start procedures were changed before the beginning of the 2026 campaign to help avoid problems of drivers fumbling their getaways because it was too hard to get the new cars off the line.

There were also tweaks to reduce the extra boost available to cars in the race. The aim was to help avoid the kind of huge closing speeds that triggered a bad crash in March suffered by Ollie Bearman in Japan after he was caught out when trying to pass Franco Colapinto.

But minor tweaks were not going to cure one of the biggest bugbears for drivers and the more hardcore fans: that qualifying had lost its spectacle and challenge because of excessive energy management requirements.

F1 teams and bosses ultimately accepted that the 50:50 element must be abandoned by reducing the role of the battery. Following May’s Miami Grand Prix, an agreement in principle was made to move away from the near-equal split between combustion and electrical power and towards 60:40 from as early as the start of the 2027 season.

To achieve the shift, F1 is looking to increase the power of the combustion engine by 50kW from a nominal 350kW to 400kW and to reduce the battery element from 350kW to 300kW. This will be achieved by increasing the amount of fuel that can be fed into the engine. Additionally, the idea is also to allow greater and faster energy harvesting into corners and potentially making batteries bigger, to store more energy.

Together, these changes should allow the cars to run flat-out more, result in less dramatic speed drop-offs at the end of straights and, critically, be more intuitive for drivers.

Some complications remain to be resolved before the changes can come in for 2027. They include proposals to get round the problem of larger fuel tanks being needed by teams that want to race with the current chassis next year.

The hope is that the shift from 50:50 will put to bed the negatives of the new rules, before the focus then moves to whether the V8s return in 2030 or 2031.

The key battleground for that next era of rules will be how big a role the batteries should have. F1 has learned the hard way in 2026 about the downsides of being overambitious with electrical energy.

Oxford BioMedica leaves door open to private equity takeover

UK-listed group has already rejected multiple unsolicited offers from EQT and says a deal would have to be the right fit

The chief executive of Oxford BioMedica has left the door open to a possible takeover, saying some private equity groups could be a good match for the cell and gene therapy developer which rejected multiple unsolicited offers from EQT this year.

Frank Mathias, who has led the FTSE 250 company since 2023, told the FT in an interview that although the group declined a final bid from Sweden’s EQT in February for an undisclosed amount, his company would always consider offers that could be beneficial to growth and shareholders.

“In life, you have different profiles of private equity firms,” Mathias said ahead of Oxford BioMedica’s capital markets day in London on Tuesday. “Not all will fit us but I believe there are a few that can fit us because maybe under a private situation we [would] be able to grow quicker, because they would be able to give us more financial means. This is something that is fair to at least be considered.”

However he added that any take-private offers would have to reflect a value deemed worthy by the company and match the group’s vision for its future.

“It’s not only the financial figures that drives us here, it’s also what will happen with the vision of the company, how can the private equity firm help us grow quicker,” he said. “These are also very important questions that need to be discussed in advance and that’s where we are. It might be that we might become private but also there are advantages to being on the stock exchange.”

Oxford BioMedica, which began life as a spinout from Oxford university in 1995, shot to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic when it manufactured vaccines on behalf of pharma giant AstraZeneca. The company has since pivoted to become a contract development and manufacturing organisation that manufactures viral vectors for cell and gene therapies. The group focuses on autoimmune disorders and cancer therapies.

Its share price has risen by about 90 per cent over the past 12 months, although it has dipped slightly since the start of the year. The company has a market capitalisation of about £744mn.

EQT’s series of unsolicited private bids for Oxford BioMedica forms part of a broader trend of the buyout sector targeting Europe’s listed groups. UK-based biotechs have also been the subject of takeover bids by US pharma groups with superior financial firepower.

Mathias said the company had to confirm EQT’s bids when news of its interest leaked to the press in January because of UK stock market rules. However, the French executive said they always made it clear that the company was not for sale — a decision that was backed by its largest shareholders, including Novo Holdings, who he said believed in the trajectory of the group.

Oxford BioMedica recorded revenues of £171mn last year, an increase of 33 per cent compared to 2024. Mathias expects the group to keep growing given its experience in the niche market of contract manufacturing viral vectors in cell and gene therapy and its investment in the key US market where there is growing demand.

“We believe that the potential of the company, and this is backed by our long-range plan, is phenomenal,” said Mathias. “Our expectation is that we continue to grow at the pace which will be higher than the market.”

Former colleagues say businessman’s management style should have raised concerns as oil group weighed him as chair

BP’s sudden decision last week to oust chair Albert Manifold eight months into the job stunned the City. For some who worked under him at his previous employer CRH, however, the mystery was why the oil major hired him in the first place.

Interviews with 10 former colleagues and advisers from his time at the Irish cement group portray a leader whose business acumen was admired but whose management style could leave staff feeling humiliated or sidelined.

They also depict a company where top performers were treated to luxury foreign gatherings featuring Ferraris, private jets and a travelling sommelier, in contrast to Manifold’s stated mission to cut unnecessary spending at BP.

The accounts raise questions over decision-making at BP, whose board last week unanimously agreed to remove Manifold amid “serious concerns” about his behaviour, including allegations of bullying, as well as over the process by which recruiter Egon Zehnder brought him to the company.

While the former colleagues differ on whether he crossed the line from demanding and ambitious to abrasive and confrontational, many expressed surprise that BP’s due diligence had not uncovered potential concerns over a leadership style that later came under scrutiny at the energy group.

Several of the people who spoke to the FT painted Manifold as charming, magnanimous and determined, but they also said he could react badly when challenged.

One former manager described his approach as “his way or the highway”, while another said he had a “volcanic” temper.

Some talked of Manifold losing his cool in meetings if a subordinate disagreed with him, missed targets or presented an idea he deemed unworthy, saying he could belittle them or resort to personal criticism.

Two recalled instances of him publicly reprimanding staff. One cited a colleague being berated as lazy in an email copied to several people, while the other said they had witnessed Manifold telling people to “shut the f*ck up”.

All spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid repercussions.

Lawyers for Manifold disputed the former colleagues’ characterisation of his management style, adding that the incidents described to the FT were “not true”.

The businessman has previously hit out at “lies” surrounding his departure from BP by those “allowed to hide behind anonymity”.

In a statement following his ousting from the oil major, Manifold said: “in my 40-year working career, I have never once had accusations made against me such as those made in recent days. I dispute entirely this characterisation of my conduct.”

BP and CRH declined to comment.

Not everyone agreed that Manifold’s conduct was unacceptable, with some arguing he was simply a demanding leader with high standards.

One person who worked closely with Manifold at CRH described him as “a force”, saying he was “hard-charging” and “tough” but “never crossed the line”.

Several praised him for his strategic vision and ability to oversee a vast corporate empire with almost 80,000 employees across nearly 30 countries.

Under his leadership from 2014 to 2024, the company’s stock surged almost 400 per cent, helped by steadily improving profitability, raising its market capitalisation to more than $60bn.

CRH continued a deal streak under Manifold, operating like a buyout firm that bought and sold assets and then used the proceeds to invest in other operations or conduct share buybacks.

But the Irishman also brought greater focus, realising that CRH needed to prioritise core businesses and simplify its structure to win over investors — and spearheading two of the company’s transformative moves.

CRH’s 2015 acquisition of assets from Holcim and Lafarge, which cleared the way for a merger between the Swiss and French cement giants, turned it into the world’s third-largest building materials supplier.

That €6.5bn deal added 15,000 employees and a much stronger presence in cement and aggregates in the US and Canada, as well as core European locations such as France, Germany and the UK and some emerging markets.

Manifold also oversaw the 2023 move of CRH’s primary listing from London to New York to tap deeper capital pools, economic growth and construction demand in North America, which accounted for almost 75 per cent of group earnings.

He was rewarded for his success. Manifold was the third-best-paid executive in the FTSE 100 in 2022 with a package worth £11.68mn, according to an annual study from the High Pay Centre. The following year he was listed as the highest-paid Irish executive by remuneration tracker Paygap.ie.

US buyout group CD&R recognised his talent, hiring him in July 2025 to advise on industrial transactions and portfolio companies. As of Thursday he was still listed as an adviser on the CD&R website, where he continued to be described as BP’s chair.

Following his ousting and media coverage of his alleged behaviour, Manifold told reporters he had fought to cut “unnecessary and excessive expenditure” at BP.

“I made my own coffee, bought my lunch in the local café,” he said. “I sat in a small office, eschewing the grand corner-office privilege of previous chairmen.”

Accounts by former colleagues at CRH highlight a contrast between the frugal tone struck by Manifold at BP and opulent events for senior staff that took place during his tenure leading the cement company.

At one, about eight years ago, CRH invited hundreds of top performers along with a travelling sommelier to Rome, where they spent several nights at the Waldorf Astoria’s five-star Cavalieri hotel and were offered perks including Ferrari test drives, according to three people familar with the event.

Between networking and presentations, employees took tours of the city and cooking classes.

CRH held similar events in warm-weather destinations including Spain and Florida, according to two people who attended.

One year, about 30 top managers gathered at Singapore’s Fullerton hotel, according to people familiar with the excursion, which included a side-trip by private jet to Manila, from where they flew by helicopter to visit a newly acquired cement plant in the Philippine jungle.

While some relished the experience, others disliked spending long periods away from their families, according to two people who cited an inside joke at the company about the “Lonely Housewives of CRH”.

Another executive said he “chuckled” when he saw Manifold’s comments on cutting costs at BP, given what he described as “gross” expenses for meetings in luxury venues.

After several years of these trips, CRH decided to rein in the spending, according to people familiar with the matter. One former employee said: “For a global company selling rocks and blocks, they thought it was over the top to be doing these extreme, white-glove events.”

Manifold’s lawyers said the gatherings were of the kind that were “entirely standard” in a multinational business.

A spokesperson for the businessman said his mandate at CRH was “to grow shareholder value, build a global business, win market share and cement relationships across multiple continents. His objective as chair of BP was entirely different.”

Manifold was no stranger to Egon Zehnder, the executive search firm that helped BP recruit him.

The Swiss firm in 2024 advised CRH on what the company described as a “rigorous programme” to identify Manifold’s successor, while in 2013 it ran the process that led to his appointment as CEO of the Irish company, according to annual reports.

Egon Zehnder declined to comment on its work with Manifold but said it applied “well-established assessment and referencing standards to all our mandates, including independent third-party due diligence”.

Before Manifold stepped down as chief executive, he briefly considered pursuing the role of chair at CRH, a job switch that had never occurred at the company, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

He ultimately decided against the move, one of the people said, and the board instead appointed him a special adviser and retained Richie Boucher as chair.

Manifold’s abrupt exit from BP also raises questions over whether he was suited to a non-executive position as chair, particularly at a British company where the role is typically more restrained.

One former adviser said Manifold’s strengths as a demanding CEO did not naturally translate to the role of chair, which requires consensus-building skills.

Another former colleague said he was puzzled when BP appointed him to a non-executive role, given his apparent management style.

“It makes no sense that BP hired him.”

Multibillion-pound contract to build three small modular reactors was signed with government body in April

Rolls-Royce is facing mounting criticism from politicians and industry figures for a decision to outsource the core parts of a multibillion-pound UK government plan for three small nuclear reactors to South Korea. 

The announcement by the British engineering giant, the lead investor in a consortium developing the reactors, has raised questions about whether the government’s target of 70 per cent of the project being British-made will be met.

Rolls-Royce SMR’s selection of South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility to finalise designs for key components for the small nuclear reactors has triggered warnings from industry representatives that the UK is squandering a chance to build its own supply chain for the technology.

Liam Byrne, Labour MP and chair of parliament’s business and trade committee, said he would be writing to ministers seeking clarification as to how Rolls-Royce’s announcement is compatible with the 70 per cent target.

“This decision raises serious questions about whether the government has a credible plan to turn its commitment to ‘Buy British’ into reality,” he said. “If taxpayers are helping fund a new strategic industry, we need to understand why key contracts are going overseas and what steps are being taken to build British capability for the future.”

Last week’s announcement by Rolls-Royce SMR came just two days after chancellor Rachel Reeves had written to ministers urging them to “buy British” by awarding more government contracts to domestic companies in sectors including steel and energy infrastructure.

Gareth Stace, director-general of UK Steel, said the decision was “extremely disappointing” and at odds with the government’s own industrial strategy aimed at supporting British industry, energy security and supply chain resilience. 

“The UK’s nuclear renaissance should be an opportunity to create jobs, investment and industrial capability here in Britain. It cannot simply become a vehicle for taking public money and then exporting the economic value overseas,” he added.

The contract for Rolls-Royce SMR to build three small modular reactors (SMRs) at Wylfa in North Wales was signed in April with UK government body Great British Energy as part of a plan to invest £2.6bn in the technology over the course of the parliament. 

The UK’s National Wealth Fund, a government-backed policy bank that promises to “unlock Britain’s future”, is also committing up to £599mn to Rolls-Royce SMR to support the development of its small modular reactors. 

Industry insiders said they had hoped that the group would invest in fabricating the new reactors in the UK, with inputs from British companies such as Sheffield Forgemasters, which was nationalised in 2021 to preserve the UK nuclear-submarine build capability.

Instead, critics said they feared the announcement by Rolls-Royce SMR means that core elements of the “nuclear islands” — described as the equivalent to the engines in a car — are now likely to be built in South Korea, leaving UK suppliers to produce lower-value components.

Under the agreement announced last week, Doosan and Škoda will undertake early production work for key components of the nuclear islands, including for the reactor pressure vessels.

Doosan is a global leader in nuclear power equipment and produces entire reactor vessels. Sheffield Forgemasters produces forgings which are a component in the vessels.

A person close to Forgemasters said it was a “perverse outcome” that the UK government should invest over £500mn in saving the strategically important facility, only to see it being marginalised in the UK’s own SMR supply chain.

Before winning the contract, Rolls-Royce SMR told MPs on parliament’s Energy Security & Net Zero Committee in February last year that it was “unashamedly Team UK” and that “up to 78 per cent” of the reactor could be made in the UK. 

When asked this week, Rolls-Royce SMR declined to comment on what proportion of content would be made in the UK under current plans, saying only that “88 per cent of our spend since the business was established [in 2021] has been with UK-based businesses — hundreds of millions of pounds”.  

Governments are backing SMRs, which are smaller than the conventional gigawatt-scale plants that have been built around the world, to provide a reliable source of electricity to meet rising demand without carbon emissions. 

The International Energy Agency has estimated that over 1,000 SMRs could be built by 2050, with cumulative investment of more than $670bn in the sector. 

The situation has echoes of the UK’s failure to develop a stronger position in wind turbine manufacturing despite having the largest offshore wind market outside China. The UK does not have a national wind turbine maker, relying heavily on imports. 

Professor Keith Ridgway, who founded the UK’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, said the UK, with its existing capabilities in nuclear submarine manufacturing in cities like Sheffield, was “perfectly placed” to be a world leader in SMRs.

South Yorkshire mayor Oliver Coppard said the Sheffield region, including Forgemasters and the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, already had the foundations of a globally competitive SMR cluster.

“If key parts of production are moved overseas at this stage, there’s a real risk we miss a once‑in‑a-generation opportunity,” he added.

Rolls-Royce SMR said the company would “procure over 40 million components for each SMR” and it was “committed to maximising UK content for our first project, alongside Great British Energy — Nuclear, where competitive capability exists”. 

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said it was looking to “unlock a golden age” of nuclear power that would create thousands of jobs across the UK.

“Great British Energy — Nuclear’s ambition is that 70 per cent of supply chain products are British-built across the small modular reactor fleet,” a spokesperson added.