Romania goes ahead with program to develop small modular reactors with NuScale

The shareholders of government-controlled nuclear group Nuclearelectrica (BVB: SNN) in Romania announced on July 19 that they approved the continuation of the project to develop Small Modular Reactors (SMR) based on the updated pre-feasibility study documentation.

Thus, SNN shareholders approved the conclusion by the SMR project company RoPower Nuclear, where SNN holds a 50% stake, of the contracts related to phase 2 of the FEED (Front-End Engineering Design) study for the project, which will be carried out by Fluor, with the US company NuScale as a subcontractor.

To finance the development of the project, SNN shareholders, among whom the government holds an 82.5% stake, agreed to increase almost 11-fold the ceiling of the loan extended by the company to RoPower Nuclear on August 16, 2023, from USD 22 million to USD 243 million.

But the loan will be executed "only to the extent that it will not be possible to secure the financing of the SMR project from other sources (share capital, generated by the change in the shareholding structure of RoPower Nuclear, or bank loans/credits or other sources of financing) and, in any case, only until such other sources of financing are identified," according to SNN shareholders.

Three months ago, faced with the same decision, the ministry abstained from voting.

The project and its financing from funds of the state-controlled Nuclearelectrica were publicly questioned because of the economic risks posed by SMR projects around the globe.

The project in Romania is developed by the joint venture RoPower Nuclear SA, controlled in equal proportions by Nuclearelectrica and Nova Power&Gas part of the private group E-INFRA group, the owner of the site in Doicești, where the construction of the SMR project with an installed capacity of 462MW is being considered, to replace a former coal-fired thermal power plant.

In a project based on the same technology, NuScale Power announced last fall that it had agreed with the Utah Municipal Association to end the company's small modular reactor project due to costs being too high. The energy cost would have reached USD 89 per MWh.

NuScale hopes to build SMRs in Romania, Kazakhstan, Poland, and Ukraine.

(Photo source: Nuclearelectrica.ro)