State-owned French power utility EDF is aiming to finalise the conceptual design of a small modular reactor next year, a senior executive said on Thursday, as the nuclear giant looks to compete in an increasingly crowded global market for the new technology.
The company aims to have up to 30 of the small reactors in service by 2050, said Julien Garrel, CEO of small modular reactor division Nuward.
While EDF is pulling back from the international market with its larger reactors, the small modular reactors will be marketed globally to power-intensive industry like metallurgy and data centres.
NO SMALL MODULAR REACTOR HAS YET BEEN MASS PRODUCED
No small modular reactor has yet been mass produced but dozens of companies are racing to get their technologies on the market, with the smaller scale seen as a targeted power supply solution with a lower barrier to entry than high-cost traditional reactors.
EDF said last year that it had scrapped its own small modular reactor design to fall back on proven technologies.
Nuward’s small reactor is expected to produce 400 megawatts of power and 115 megawatts of heat, making it suited to providing stable baseload power for industry, Garrel told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Nuclear Exhibition in Paris.
FIRST PROTOTYPE IS EXPECTED TO BE ONLINE IN 2035
The first prototype is expected to be online in 2035, followed by one reactor annually until it has four in two countries, Garrel said.
“We are confident to deliver electricity and heat at a competitive price, and that the market will have a need for us,” he said.
This is behind European competitor timelines, with Thorizon looking to put a reactor into service by 2030 and Newcleo aiming for a prototype in 2031. In Canada, OPG has already started on its first prototype for its boiling water reactor.
There is no guarantee the small modular reactors will be built in France and they could be constructed elsewhere in Europe, an EDF spokesperson said.
Financing is expected to come from the French government, industrial customers, banks and private investment funds, Garrel said.
The costs and conceptual design are set to coincide with EDF’s final investment decision on its fleet of six large-scale EPR2 reactors for its home market, which the company plans to deliver by the second half of 2026.
Source: Reuters
