EDF is the French utility which builds, operates and sell nuclear fission power reactors. They just announced that they will create a wholly-owned subsidiary which will market their Nuward small modular reactor (SMR). The purpose of this action is to allow the Nuward reactor to meet its “next key milestones” on the way to first pouring of concrete for an power plant in 2030.
Following the conceptual design phase, EDF said that “Nuward will now proceed with the basic design activities to progress design maturity, leveraging the expertise and experience of EDF Group’s nuclear engineering teams, while also benefiting from the support of an international network of industrial partners”.
A Design and Safety options file must be submitted to the French Nuclear Safety Authority in July. Discussion and engagement will also take place to assess and select possible sites for the first plant in France.
The Nuward SMR project was launched in September of 2019 by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), EDF, Naval Group and TechnicAtome. The first Nuward project consists of a three hundred and forty megawatt SMR plant with two pressurized water reactors (PWR) of one hundred and seventy megawatts each. It has been jointly developed using France’s long-term experience with PWRs. The new SMR technology is expected to replace old high CO2-emitting coal, oil and gas power plants around the world. Other applications such as hydrogen production, urban and district heating or desalinization will also be supported.
Nuward company will continue to work with its long-time partners as well as new partners following its establishment. Its workforce is expected to expand to about one hundred and fifty workers in its core team by 2024. More than six hundred workers in total including partners’ staff will be contributing to the project.
Renaud Crassous is Nuward’s President. He said the aim was to “fully integrate the SMR catalysts for success, i.e. innovation, modularization, standardization and series production. We are committed to increasing the speed of execution to deliver the Nuward SMR design on time to meet market expectations for first nuclear concrete as early as 2030.”
Xavier Ursat is the EDF Group Senior Executive in charge of Engineering and New Nuclear Projects Division. He said that as a subsidiary embedded within the EDF Group, Nuward will be “a key enabler for a time-to-market product, providing the agility and speed required to meet the next key milestones”.
The Nuward is one of a variety of SMRs in development at the moment in different countries and the company hopes to eventually become the European leader in SMR technology. It has already attracted interest elsewhere in Europe. A regulatory agreement was reached last year. This means that the French nuclear safety regulator and Czech and Finnish regulators are collaborating for a pilot European early joining regulatory review.
According to EDF’s SMR roadmap, the phase involving the detailed design and formal application for a new nuclear facility is scheduled to begin in 2026. This will be followed by pouring the first concrete in France in 2030 with the construction of that first unit anticipate to take about three years.