HD Hyundai Heavy Industries and 11 other industry, academic and research institutions launch Marine SMR Demonstration Center

[Financial News] HD Hyundai Heavy Industries is joining forces with industry and academia in Korea’s shipbuilding and nuclear power sectors to demonstrate marine small modular reactors (SMRs) and lay the groundwork for their industrialization.
HD Hyundai Heavy Industries said on the 7th that 12 institutions in the shipbuilding and nuclear power sectors had signed an MOU on the 6th at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) to launch the SMR Marine Technology Demonstration Center.
The signatories were HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co., Ltd. (HDKSOE), Korea Electric Power Engineering, Hyundai Engineering & Construction, Korean Register, Hyundai Heavy Industries Turbo Machinery, Clad Korea, Ulsan Technopark, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul National University, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and Hanyang University.
The demonstration center will serve as a hub for joint efforts spanning marine SMR technology development, testing and verification, and demonstration by linking the participating institutions’ technologies, expert personnel and research facilities.
The participating institutions plan to share testing facilities and research infrastructure to reduce duplicative investment and improve the efficiency of technology verification. They will also jointly develop core technologies needed to apply marine SMRs by linking industry’s technology needs with universities’ research capabilities. They will work together to identify and plan large-scale national projects and government research and development (R&D) initiatives.
Through this effort, they plan to bring together the domestic shipbuilding industry’s design and construction capabilities, nuclear technology, and universities’ research capabilities to carry out technology development and demonstrations. The aim is to establish a collaborative foundation that will eventually extend to commercialization.
Representatives of participating institutions, including Hyundai Engineering & Construction and Korea Electric Power Engineering, said, “We expect the center to serve as an opportunity to strengthen industry-academia-research collaboration and bring forward the commercialization of marine SMRs in Korea by linking technology development with demonstration and commercialization.”
Won Gwang-sik, head of HD Hyundai Heavy Industries’ Marine Energy Business Division and an executive vice president, said, “The SMR Marine Technology Demonstration Center will serve as a collaborative hub that effectively links technology and research infrastructure in Korea’s shipbuilding and nuclear power sectors.” He added, “Together with the participating institutions, we will build, step by step, the foundations for demonstrating marine nuclear technology and industrializing it.”
[email protected] Jeong Won-il Reporter