The Welsh government has chosen a former Westinghouse nuclear executive to resurrect Trawsfynydd, the site of one of Britain’s first nuclear power stations and possible location for a new generation of reactors, reports in the UK said.

According to the Financial Times, the government has recruited Mike Tynan, a former head of UK operations at US nuclear engineering group Westinghouse, to a new publicly-owned development company called Cwmni Egino charged with exploiting the “economic benefits” of small modular reactors at Trawsfynydd in north Wales.

Developers of SMRs including Rolls-Royce say they can be built in factories and assembled on site, thereby reducing the costs and complexities associated with the construction of large-scale nuclear energy plants such as Hinkley Pont C in England, where two EPR plants are being built.