Commercial

EDF Exits the UK’s SMR Competition

By Rachael Zisk
Share
The most recent Nuward design. Image: EDF

There’s one less company in the race to build an SMR for Britain.

This week, Électricité de France (EDF), the French state power company, withdrew its Nuward SMR concept from a key UK program just before the competition’s latest deadline. The Nuward SMR concept is experiencing some growing pains, and the company doesn’t have a design ready for primetime.

A different approach: The failure to meet the UK solicitation deadline came just a few days after EDF announced it was taking a different approach to building SMRs. Where before, the Nuward design concept would have integrated new, in-house technologies, the company will now design an SMR using existing technologies.

  • EDF has been developing the Nuward concept for the last four years but hasn’t revealed any details about how much the design will have to change.
  • A Nuward source told Reuters last week that the decision was made to reassure potential buyers that development costs won’t balloon before the project is complete.

Now, EDF plans to use existing technologies and assemble them into a more cost-effective version of an SMR. What technologies those are and how they’ll be assembled remains to be seen.

The British competition: Five other companies are still vying for one of the two coveted spots in the UK’s SMR program, whose winners are expected to be named this year. And the nominees are:

  1. Rolls-Royce, with its Rolls-Royce SMR design
  2. GE Hitachi, with its BWRX-300 concept
  3. Westinghouse, which is building an AP300 SMR that is essentially a scaled-down version of the popular AP1000 light water reactor
  4. Holtec Britain, which is working on its SMR-300
  5. Nuscale Power ($SMR) and its Nuscale SMR project

What’s next? The British SMR competition has already been delayed once, and the bidders are hoping that there won’t be further postponements. The recent elections have created additional uncertainty: While the new Labour government in the UK has signaled its support for nuclear, the extent of that support remains to be seen. Barring any changes, however, two award recipients will be selected by the end of 2024.

+ posts

Lead Reporter of Ignition

Share
Return Home
Related Stories
Commercial • Fusion

Pacific Fusion Plots a Path to Net Gain

Last October, Pacific Fusion emerged from stealth with a splashy $900M Series A and a commitment to build an inertial fusion machine based on the technologies that made the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and the Z Machine successful.  Now, the company has come out with a roadmap to build a net gain facility by 2030—and […]

Commercial • Reactors

NANO To Build a Research Reactor At UIUC

NANO Nuclear Energy ($NNE) is making plans for its first reactor build. Last week, the publicly traded SMR company announced an agreement with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to build a research reactor on campus. The reactor, a version of the company’s flagship Kronos micro modular reactor, uses tech acquired from the now-bankrupt Ultra Safe […]

Commercial

Dow Goes the Nuclear Route with X-energy

If you still have the idea that nuclear power isn’t an attractive energy source to the major industrial players, think again.  Dow, one of the largest chemicals and plastics producers in the world, announced this week that it is working with X-energy to transition its industrial plant in Seadrift, Texas, to nuclear power in the […]

Commercial

Terrestrial Energy Plans Its SPAC Merger

Another nuclear company is on its way to the public markets. Last week, Terrestrial Energy announced its plans to merge with HCM II Acquisition Corp., a SPAC, and list on the NASDAQ under the ticker $IMSR. The company joins fellow nuclear SPAC Oklo ($OKLO) on the public markets, as well as NANO Nuclear Energy ($NNE), […]