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Part 1 of 3 Parts
Renaud Crassous is the President and CEO of Nuward. Nuward is a wholly-owned subsidiary of EDF, the French state-owned nuclear manufacturer and exporter. Nuward was created to drive the development of EDF’s Nuward small modular reactor (SMR). Nuward aims to be “Europe’s SMR.” SMRs are pressurized water reactors that produce less than three hundred megawatts of power. They will be constructed in factories in order to take advantage of quality control and economies of scale. They are advertised as being safer and cheaper than conventional PWRs. However, they are based on new technologies that still have technical problems awaiting solutions. Crassous recently spoke about the prospects for SMRs and new nuclear.
Nuward is a three hundred and forty megawatt plant based on third generation reactor technology. The plant is constructed with two one hundred and seventy megawatt Nuward reactors. They are fully integrated pressurized water reactors (PWR). Crassous believes that the Nuward plant is complementary to the big nuclear power plants. He said that Nuward is triggering interest among not only utilities that have previously expressed interest in nuclear power but also among clients who have never been interested in nuclear power before. It is broadening the scope of civil nuclear power in the global energy transition to low carbon energy sources.
The reason that EDF created the Nuward subsidiary company was to combine the agility of a small company dedicated to Nuward’s development of the Nuward reactor technology. EDF has gathered on this project all the big companies that have deep skills and great expertise on various PWR reactors. EDF is trying to combine those two things, agility and autonomy. They also want to keep very close contact and tight cooperation with all these big actors in the nuclear sector. A main objective is speed because clients all expect rapid delivery of SMRs. EDF has competitors that are racing against climate change, many of which share EDF’s target of 2030 for net-zero. In order to reach that target, Nuward will have to go much faster than EDF has in the past in the delivery of new reactors. This new company is fully focused on the fact they need to deliver this product very quickly.
The Nuward project was launched in 2019 and the timeline has been to focus on 2030 because this is the best compromise between the expectation of the potential market and Nuward’s ability to grow quickly to deliver this new product to that market.
The nuclear industry needs to develop some common rules and common principles so that the work required to adapt a design between countries can be reduced. Nuward decided to move in that direction with the help of the French nuclear regulatory agency which has the lead on this. The regulators from France, Czech Republic and Finland have discussed the Nuward design. This is very important but only a first step. The regulators share information, they share how they converge or diverge about one or two specifications on the safety case, etc.
Please read Part 2 next