Small modular nuclear reactors to be deployed in Poland 

A thousand or two of these and Hinkley Point C could be surplus to requirements. — PEI reporting.

A UK-based small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) development consortium has announced a co-operation agreement with the Polish National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ) aimed at deploying its U-Battery technology in Poland.  

The consortium developing the U-Battery includes lead partner URENCO, Amec Foster Wheeler, Atkins, Cammell Laird and Laing O’Rourke. The companies say their product is a micro-modular reactor designed to produce local power and heat, and is capable of generating 4 MWe and 10 MWth as well as process heat up to 800°C.  

Poland is “one of a handful of initial strategic future markets” the consortium is engaging with, it said, with an eye to use at heavy industrial sites to increase fuel supply security and help the nation meet its decarbonization goals by reducing coal-fired generation.

The company says it has also been in talks with Canadian organizations about using the U-Battery to provide power to remote northern communities. U-Battery is considering a build-own-operate model for its initial distribution.

Andrzej Piotrowski, Poland’s undersecretary of state and energy minister, said the agreement was “a major step in exploring a range of technologies to address future needs of safe, environment friendly, dispersed and still flexible and easy to integrate technologies of co-generative energy production”.

Full report: Small modular nuclear reactors to be deployed in Poland – Power Engineering International