U.S. company to develop 20MW small modular reactor in Romania

The U.S. company Last Energy, specialising in small modular nuclear reactors, together with Romania's Autonomous Directorate of Nuclear Energy Technologies (RATEN), will carry out on the nuclear platform in Mioveni a pilot project complementary with the investments already announced by Romania in the nuclear field, prime minister Nicolae Ciuca announced, Economica.net reported.

Under a bilateral project, Romania and the U.S. plan to develop such small scale nuclear reactors to consolidate the country's power generation capacity and replace the coal-fired thermal plants.

Last Energy is developing solutions for small modular nuclear reactors (20 MWh of installed capacity).

The United States and Romania plan to build a "first-of-a-kind" small modular reactor (SMR) plant in Romania in partnership with U.S. NuScale Power, the White House announced in a briefing related to president Joe Biden's participation at the COP26 summit in Glasgow last November.

The partnership will bring the latest civil nuclear technology to Romania, according to the same source.

Romania's Presidency also issued a press release mentioning that Romania will include Small Modular Reactors (SMR) in the national energy production system until 2028, which will strengthen the partnership with the U.S. in the civil nuclear field.

(Photo: Korn Vitthayanukarun/ Dreamstime)