Alice Cunningham
Reporting from Suffolk

Image source, Vikki Irwin/BBC

While some locals are opposed to Sizewell C - see our previous post for an example - others welcome today's funding announcement.

"I think [Sizewell C] is a really positive thing for the community," says Chris Matthews, 36, a trainee paramedic from Leiston, the town just west of the plant.

"I've lived here 10 years, always in the shadow of two historical power plants so I don't really see what difference a third is going to make.

"It's going to be good for the town, for the local economy, local empty shops being filled up and there's been a bit of a buzz around the place recently.

"There's the negatives of the traffic, but actually that's bearable when you can see the increased revenue and income coming into the town.

"Ultimately if we want this country to be independent and self-sustaining we need the resources and the electric to be in-house, so it needs to come from somewhere."

Richard Daniel
BBC Look East

Now Rachel Reeves has finished speaking in Brighton, let's go back to Suffolk - where the Sizewell C nuclear plant is being built.

David Grant's farm at Middleton will be cut in two by the new Sizewell C access road - he says the government's funding announcement is "outrageous".

"This is a project that has been promoted by a French company [EDF] that has never completed a nuclear project on time or on budget," he says.

"They don't want to invest their own money in it, which must speak volumes for their own confidence in their technology and ability to perform.

"And yet we're pouring taxpayers' money into this thing, it just beggars belief. As a businessman I don't understand it."

Image source, Martin Giles/BBC

Rachel Reeves confirmed today's £14.2bn investment at the GMB union congress in Brighton - watch her comments below.

Taken together, Reeves says, tomorrow's Spending Review sets out more than £30bn of investment in nuclear power.

"This Labour government is launching a new era of nuclear power here in Britain," she says, to applause from the congress.

As we've already reported, today's announcement is not just about Sizewell C - the government is also investing in small modular reactors (see our earlier explainer here).

Reeves details investment of £2.5bn to enable "one of world’s the first small modular reactor programmes", ing "3,000 jobs in the East Midlands in the process".

She says the preferred partner is Rolls Royce - "a great British business based in Derby".

The chancellor is now met with cheers and applause from the GMB congress, as she announces that the "government is investing in the biggest rollout of nuclear power in a generation".

She goes on to confirm the investment in Sizewell C, which she suggests will produce the energy to supply six million homes, employ 10,000 people, and "thousands more jobs across the UK".

Reeves adds that the government will also be backing "new smaller modular reactors", and providing a route for private sector nuclear projects to be based in the UK.

Reeves begins by going over the government's record and priorities - she tells the congress in Brighton that at tomorrow's Spending Review the government will announce £113bn in new investments, bringing investment to the highest levels "since the 1970s".

The government is "going for growth", she says.

The chancellor is talking about the government's plans at the GMB union congress in Brighton - watch live at the top of the page.

Image source, Martin Giles/BBC

The Green Party's co-leader Adrian Ramsay, the party's only MP in Suffolk, describes Sizewell C as a "nuclear gamble" - and says the money would be better spent elsewhere.

"Nuclear power is hugely expensive and far too slow to come on-line," he says.

"The only thing delivered by EDF so far at Hinkley Point in Somerset is overspend and delay.

"Electricity was promised by 2017 [at Hinkley] with a price tag of £22bn but this has mushroomed to £40bn and Hinkley is still producing no power."

Ramsay says the money should instead be invested in "genuinely green power" like solar s and tidal power.

Alice Cunningham
Reporting from Suffolk

Image source, Isaac Chenery/BBC

Barry Smith works at the Bake 'N' Butty Cafe, next to the Sizewell office building at the power plant, and has lived in the area all his life.

He worked at Sizewell B 20 years ago and believes the area has benefited from the plant's presence (there has been an operational nuclear plant at Sizewell since 1966).

"It wouldn't be the same at all without it; we would have suffered a lot harder in the recessions because the work was still there," he says.

He says that, overall, Sizewell C is good for the area and will benefit local businesses.

Image source, Getty Images

In just over half an hour, we're expecting to hear from Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who is attending the annual meeting of the GMB Union in Brighton.

During her speech, Reeves is expected to speak more about the £14.2bn funding for Sizewell C.

In a press release earlier, the chancellor said the energy investment showed the government was "once again investing in Britian’s renewal, with the biggest nuclear building programme in a generation".

We'll bring you all the key lines from Reeves as soon as we get them - and you can watch live at the top of the page.

Ben Parker
Reporting from Suffolk

Image source, Jo Thewlis/BBC

Suffolk County Council didn't have any say on whether the nuclear power station could be built, as the government make planning decisions on large infrastructure projects of this scale.

However, when construction began, the council said it would "ensure Sizewell C delivers for Suffolk".

Richard Rout, Conservative councillor in charge of major infrastructure at the council, says: "We will have the foremost operational nuclear cluster in Suffolk and we don't want to see the boom and bust that we perhaps saw with Sizewell B."

He says he wants long-term jobs created in Suffolk - rather than jobs and skills disappearing once the construction project is complete.

Want to hear more on this story?

The BBC Radio Suffolk Breakfast show is currently live in Leiston hearing arguments both for and against Sizewell C.

You can listen on BBC Sounds here.

George King
Reporting from Suffolk

Together Against Sizewell C chairwoman, Jenny Kirtley, is unhappy with the impact of Sizewell C on its local town of Leiston in Suffolk (although funding was confirmed today, construction work has already begun).

"The whole area is changing before our very eyes and the construction of it has just been dreadful, not to mention what has happened to the environment, that's what people are upset about," she says.

"I've been in tears many times looking at what has been going on around here, I could cry now probably if I tried."

Image source, George King/BBC

Alice Cunningham
Reporting from Suffolk

Lesley Hill, mayor of Leiston-cum-Sizewell, says she is "very pleased" by today's funding announcement.

"It gives the continuity of jobs and employment for the local people, also for the local businesses to continue," she tells BBC Radio Suffolk.

"It takes away the uncertainty."

Deputy mayor, Nicky Corbett, believes it is "important that Leiston isn't defined by Sizewell".

"This is our third power station, we obviously are a nuclear town if you like, but we have a very strong identity as a town ourselves," she adds.

Image source, Vikki Irwin/BBC

David Waddell
Business reporter

In other nuclear news today, Rolls Royce has been selected as the preferred bidder to build the country's first small modular reactors.

This is expected, says the government, to potentially "up to 3,000 new skilled jobs" and power "the equivalent of around 3 million homes with clean, secure homegrown energy".

Small modular reactors projects have captured industrial attention both within and outside the energy sector over the past couple of years - but none has yet been completed outside of Russia or China.

Last year the big tech players Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet all announced they would lean upon this technology to provide energy for their power-hungry data centres and AI endeavours.

UK's nuclear reactors are ageingpublished at 08:41 British Summer Time 10 June

08:41 BST 10 June

Theo Leggett
International business correspondent

The UK currently has nine nuclear reactors in operation (some sites have more than one reactor - see map below), but they’re ageing, and eight of them are due to close by the end of the decade.

The newest - Sizewell B - came into service 30 years ago. Last year, between them they provided a little more than 14% of our electricity.

This was a relatively small proportion of our overall consumption – significantly less than we obtained from wind (30%) or gas (26%), for example.

But crucially, nuclear provides "baseload" power - a steady supply of reliable electricity that is available to meet continuous demands on the grid, while more flexible resources can be used to deal with peaks in consumption.

Successive governments have been deeply concerned about the prospect of losing this reliable power.

That’s why we have the huge investment in Hinkley Point C in Somerset, and why Sizewell C will also get billions in funding, while there’s also a lot of interest in small modular reactors.

Miliband is then asked if he can provide a target date for Sizewell C to start providing electricity to the UK's power grid.

The energy secretary says that it will take "about a decade", and should start supplying power in the mid-2030s.

Although the government is investing at least £14.2bn in Sizewell C, there will also be other investors.

Miliband is asked whether China will be able to invest in the new power station.

"No," he tells Justin Webb - but declines to go into the details on who private bidders might be.

"It's majority public investment in Sizewell C," he says, adding that there will be "some" private investment but all bidders will go through national security checks.