The prime minister has hailed a new “golden age” of nuclear power as British and US companies announce five new commercial deals, ahead of the US president’s state visit this week.

The plans include a new nuclear power plant in Hartlepool using latent, potentially cheaper technology and data centres powered by mini reactors in Nottinghamshire.

Officials have been hurrying to coordinate the agreements before President Donald Trump jets in on Tuesday, with the two leaders expected to sign off on multibillion-pound tech deals as well as a revamped agreement to work together on nuclear power.

They hope the new Atlantic Partnership for Advanced Nuclear Energy will speed up notoriously slow nuclear projects in both countries by slashing red tape and aligning safety standards.

Both governments are betting big on nuclear to meet rising electricity demand and AI’s voracious appetite for energy, while Sir Keir Starmer hopes it will boost jobs, growth and manufacturing in former industrial heartlands.

The two leaders will also be hoping the high-profile visit will shake off last week’s scandal over revelations of the ambassador to the US Lord Mandelson’s links with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, with whom Mr Trump’s own association is being scrutinised.

The jewel of today’s announcements is the plan to replace the outgoing Hartlepool nuclear power plant, which expires in 2028, with a new plant of up to 960MW using new “advanced modular reactor” (AMR) technology.

The AMR designer, US firm X-Energy, signed a Joint Development Agreement with British Gas-owner Centrica to build and fund the fleet, which they said would generate 2,500 construction jobs and maintain hundreds when up and running in the 2030s.

What are advanced modular reactors?

Advanced or small modular reactors (AMR or SMR) are new, small nuclear power plants hoped to be quicker and faster to build than traditional technology, such as that used at the delayed and overbudget Hinkley and Sizewell sites.

Around 80 designs are in development globally and they have long been promised but barely materialised.

Read more: Why the UK has warmed up to nuclear power again

Industry says SMRs are finally about to breakthrough, given governments’ renewed appetite for nuclear power to meet energy security concerns, growing electricity demands and climate targets to phase out polluting fossil fuels.

Why tech giants love new nuclear technology

Tech giants are also hungry for SMRs to power booming AI data centres, which need the kind of clean, steady, 24/7 energy nuclear can provide.

Today EDF announced early-stage plans with US nuclear energy firm Holtec to build data centres powered by SMRs at the former Cottam coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire. If it goes ahead, it would be worth £11bn and create thousands of jobs during construction.

These new reactors need a type of fuel (High-assay low-enriched uranium or HALEU) that is only available to buy commercially from Russia and China.

Anxious about energy security, the UK government has been funding a company called Urenco to build a HALEU facility in Cheshire.

Urenco has also announced a £4m deal to sell that fuel to the US market, where it is also exploring another manufacturing site.

Two further deals to come out today involve a micro plant to power London Gateway Port and the scouting of sites for nuclear reactors designed by Bill Gates’s Terrapower.

The news has been welcomed by industry and the union Prospect.

Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the UK’s Nuclear Industry Association, said: “These deals are hugely welcome and build on a summer of record government investment in nuclear which is driving an industrial revival, creating thousands of high-value jobs, and strengthening the UK’s energy security.”

But critics warn the new technology will still be expensive and slow, arguing the money should instead pay for renewables, batteries and insulating homes to reduce energy demand in the first place. They also fear Britain’s disposal facilities can’t cope with the nuclear waste.

US promises ‘nuclear renaissance’

Sir Keir said the “landmark UK-US nuclear partnership” would “drive down household bills in the long run, while delivering thousands of good jobs in the short term”.

“Together with the US, we’re building a golden age of nuclear that puts both countries at the forefront of global innovation and investment,” he added.

US energy secretary Chris Wright hailed a “true nuclear renaissance – harnessing the power of commercial nuclear to meet rising energy demand and fuel the AI revolution”.

“Meeting this demand will require strong partnerships with our allies around the world and robust collaboration with private sector innovators,” he said.

“Today’s commercial deals set up a framework to unleash commercial access in both the US and UK, enhancing global energy security, strengthening US energy dominance, and securing nuclear supply chains across the Atlantic.”

Andrew Bowie, shadow energy minister, said: “All these announcements are simply building on the strong legacy left by the previous Conservative government who kick-started the nuclear revolution in the UK.”

Faces marked by terror and torment fill North Darfur’s displacement camps.

Their eyes fill with despair as they describe what they have survived during a 16-month siege on one of Sudan‘s oldest cities.

It has entrapped their loved ones and spread armed violence, leaving village after village burnt to the ground.

Extreme cases of torture, rape and forced starvation are shared again and again in horrifying detail.

Women collapse into sobs as they contemplate the future and the elderly raise their hands to the sky, trembling and empty, to pray for overdue relief.

In shelters which have seen little to no humanitarian aid, camp directors hand us lists showing requests for clean water, medical supplies and food. Even the trademark white United Nations tarp is scarce.

Some frayed tent material is used to close the gaps in the stick-lined walls that surround the traditional huts displaced families have built for themselves.

They use them as a temporary refuge from the battles that rage for control of the regional capital, Al Fashir.

Instead of fleeing into nearby Chad, they wait here for news that the siege has been lifted and they may finally be able to return.

But that news may never come.

‘We could hear some of them being killed’

As the bombs drop on Al Fashir, war-wounded civilians travel by road to the last functioning hospital in the state. But the beds in Tina Hospital are largely empty.

The facility cannot afford to provide free or subsidised treatment to the people that need it.

“It is so difficult. This hospital cannot care for a patient without money,” says Dr Usman Adam, standing over an emaciated teenager with a gunshot wound in his stomach.

“We need support.

“Either medication or money to the victims – by anyhow, we need support.”

In nearby camps, women are grieving brothers, fathers, and husbands killed, missing or still trapped inside Al Fashir. Many of them were forced to face Rapid Support Forces (RSF) torture as they tried to escape.

“If you don’t have money to pay ransom, they take you inside a room that looks like an office and say ‘if you don’t have anything we will kill you or worse’,” says 20-year-old mother Zahra, speaking to us at a girls’ school in Tine that is now a makeshift shelter.

“They beat the men, robbed them and whipped them. We could hear some of them being killed while we women were rounded up on a mat and threatened. We gave them money, but they took the other girls into a room, and we couldn’t tell if they were beaten or raped.”

The women around her on the mat echo Zahra’s anguish.

“They beat us, tortured us, humiliated us – everything you can imagine!” one yells out in tears.

A mother named Leila sits next to her four children and stares down at the ground. I ask her if she has hope of returning to Al Fashir, and she starts to say no as the women nearby shout: “Yes! We will return by the grace of God.”

Leila complies with weak affirmation, but her eyes have the haunting resignation of permanent loss. Her city, as she knows it, is gone.

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Babies and young children silently stare out from their laps. Many of them wear the signs of physical shock. An older woman on the mat tells us her infant grandson was blinded by the extreme conditions of their escape and takes us to see him and his mother in their hut.

“We fled Al Fashir to Tawila camp while I was heavily pregnant,” says Nadeefa, as her son Mustafa cries on her lap, unable to focus his eyes.

“After I had given birth, we made the journey here. Mustafa was only 16 days old and could not handle the harsh conditions. As time went on, we realised he couldn’t see. We think he was blinded as a newborn on the road.”

Her mother and mother-in-law sit on the mat next to her and take turns trying to calm Mustafa down. Her mother-in-law Husna tells us that her own son, Mustafa’s father, is missing.

“We don’t know where my son is,” she says. “He disappeared as we fled.”

‘They killed my children’

An elderly woman, Hawa, approaches us in the same yard with her own story to tell.

“These people [the RSF] killed my children. They killed my in-laws. They orphaned my grandchildren. They killed two of my sons.

“One of my daughters gave birth on the road and I brought her with me to this camp. I don’t have anything,” she says, trembling as she stands.

“They raped my two younger daughters in front of me. There is nothing more than that. They fled from shame and humiliation. I haven’t seen them since.”

Dr Afaf Ishaq, the camp director and emergency response room (EER) volunteer, is sobbing nearby.

“I have dealt with thousands and thousands of cases, I am on the verge of a mental breakdown,” she says.

“Sometimes in the morning, I have my tea and forget that I need to eat or how to function. I just sit listening to testimony after testimony in my head and feel like I am hallucinating.”

Everyone we speak to points to her as a source of relief and help, but Dr Ishaq is largely carrying the burden alone. When haphazard financial support for the ERR community kitchens ends, she says people flock to her complaining of hunger.

Dr Ishaq lives in the camp by herself after fleeing her home in Khartoum at the start of the war in April 2023. She says she quickly escaped after her husband joined the RSF.

Since then, she has been constantly reminded of the atrocities committed by her husband’s ranks in Khartoum, her hometown Al Fashir and the ethnic violence they are carrying out across the region.

“The RSF focuses on ethnicity,” she says. “If you are from the Zaghawa, Massalit, Fur – from Darfuri tribes – you should be killed, you should be raped.

“If they find that your mother or father are from another tribe like Rizeigat or Mahamid – they won’t rape you, they won’t touch you.”

A message for the West

In January, the Biden administration determined that the RSF are carrying out genocide in Darfur, 20 years after former US secretary of state Colin Powell made the declaration in 2004.

But the designation has done little to quell the violence.

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Sudan’s government has accused the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of supplying arms and logistical support to the RSF. The UAE denies these claims but many on the ground in Darfur say its role in this war is accepted as fact.

The silence from the UAE’s allies in the West, including the UK and US, is felt loudly here – punctuated by gunfire and daily bombs.

Dr Ishaq’s distress ratches up when I ask her about neglect from the international community.

“I direct my blame to the international community. How can they speak of human rights and ignore what is happening here?

“Where is the humanity?”

The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has refused to be interviewed by the Metropolitan Police.

German drifter Christian B, as he is known under privacy laws, became a leading person of interest following the three-year-old British girl’s disappearance from a holiday resort in Portugal in 2007.

He is expected to be released from a jail in Germany as soon as Wednesday, at the end of a sentence for raping an elderly woman in Praia da Luz in 2005.

The Met said it sent an “international letter of request” to the 49-year-old for him to speak with them – but he rejected it.

Madeleine vanished shortly after she was left sleeping by her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, who went for dinner in a nearby restaurant in Praia da Luz.

The Met said Christian B remains a suspect in its own investigation – with Portuguese and German authorities also probing Madeleine’s disappearance.

He has previously denied any involvement.

Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell, a senior investigating officer, said the force will “continue to pursue any viable lines of inquiry” in the absence of an interview with Christian B.

He said: “For a number of years we have worked closely with our policing colleagues in Germany and Portugal to investigate the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and support Madeleine’s family to understand what happened…

“We have requested an interview with this German suspect but, for legal reasons, this can only be done via an International Letter of Request which has been submitted.

“It was subsequently refused by the suspect. In the absence of an interview, we will nevertheless continue to pursue any viable lines of inquiry.”

In June, a hit-and-run theory emerged in connection with Madeleine’s death.

But her mother, Kate, has long dismissed the suggestion her daughter managed to get out of the apartment alone.

A number of searches have been carried out by German, Portuguese and British authorities since her disappearance – with the latest taking place near the Portuguese municipality of Lagos in June.

In 2023, investigators carried out searches near the Barragem do Arade reservoir, about 30 miles from Praia da Luz.

Christian B spent time in the area between 2000 and 2017 and had photographs and videos of himself near the reservoir.

In October last year, the suspect was cleared by a German court of unrelated sexual offences, alleged to have taken place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.

The total funding given to the Met’s investigation, titled Operation Grange, has been more than £13.2m since 2011 after a further £108,000 was secured from the government in April.