Hyundai Engineering signs successive MOUs with two U.S. SMR firms, seeks to join Gen IV reactor demonstrations

[Financial News]  Hyundai Engineering is seeking to participate in demonstration projects for a microreactor to be installed on a U.S. university campus and a sodium-cooled fast reactor at a U.S. national laboratory site. Leveraging more than 40 years of accumulated nuclear engineering design expertise, the company plans to make a full-scale entry into the fourth-generation small modular reactor (SMR) market.
According to Hyundai Engineering on the 27th, the company signed an MOU with ARC that day at its headquarters in Jongno-gu, Seoul, to cooperate on a first-of-a-kind SMR project based on a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR). Hyundai Engineering CEO Joo Woo-jung and ARC CEO James Wolfe were among those attending. ARC is developing the “ARC-100,” a sodium-cooled fast reactor with an electrical output of 100 MWe. It has a strategic partnership with Battelle Energy Alliance (BEA), the operator of Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and is pursuing a project to build a commercial demonstration plant with a capacity of about 200 MWe at the INL site. It is also considering plans to increase the plant’s capacity to about 600 MWe in the future. The two companies will work together on engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) cooperation and the development of new business opportunities as the project progresses.
Earlier, on the 23rd, Hyundai Engineering signed an MOU with NNE at the same location to cooperate on a first-of-a-kind micro modular reactor (MMR) project. Hyundai Engineering CEO Joo and NNE CEO James Walker were among those at the signing ceremony, where they discussed strengthening their strategic partnership and ways to cooperate on demonstration projects. NNE, a NASDAQ-listed company headquartered in New York, U.S., is developing a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) microreactor. The two companies will join forces on the “KRONOS MMR First-of-a-Kind Project,” which aims to supply heat to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus (UIUC) and achieve carbon neutrality. Hyundai Engineering plans to participate in a broad range of areas, including EPC cooperation for reactor auxiliary facilities, reviews of modularized designs, supply-chain development and business development.
The agreements with the two companies will expand Hyundai Engineering’s business into fourth-generation reactors, including high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and sodium-cooled fast reactors. A high-temperature gas-cooled reactor uses chemically stable helium gas instead of water as a coolant to produce heat at temperatures above 700 degrees Celsius. It is valuable not only for power generation but also for hydrogen production. A sodium-cooled fast reactor uses liquid sodium, which has high thermal conductivity, as a coolant. Its advantage is that it can recycle spent nuclear fuel and significantly reduce radioactive waste.
A Hyundai Engineering official said, “The nuclear engineering design expertise and experience in executing large-scale plants that we have accumulated have laid the foundation for our collaboration with global SMR companies,” adding, “With our participation in this demonstration project as an opportunity, we will further strengthen our capabilities across the entire project lifecycle, from design through EPC, and grow into a trusted core partner in the global SMR market.”


[email protected] Jeong Gyeong-su Reporter