[News Space=Reporter seungwon lee] Samsung C&T has begun to expand into the European SMR market in earnest through business cooperation in the Estonian small modular reactor (SMR) project.

Samsung C&T Construction Group (hereinafter referred to as Samsung C&T) signed a business agreement (Teaming Agreement) with Fermi Energia, a private Estonian nuclear power company, for cooperation in local SMR development at the 'Energy Mission Conference' held at the Estonian Business Hub located in Seoul Square, Jung-gu, Seoul on April 1.

Fermi Energia is a company established in 2019 by local energy and nuclear power experts for the construction of SMRs in Estonia. In February of last year, it announced that it would introduce 'BWRX-300', a 300MW SMR technology that is an improved version of the boiling water reactor (BWR, a method of boiling water in a reactor to create steam and using that power to rotate a turbine to generate electricity) two areas located about 100km east of the Estonian capital Tallinn as potential business sites. 

'BWRX-300' is an SMR developed by GE Hitachi, a joint venture between General Electric (GE) of the United States and Hitachi of Japan. It is a technology that has proven its global SMR competitiveness, as it signed a contract with Canada's Ontario Power Authority for a new nuclear power project in the Darlington area in January 2023, and is scheduled to break ground on its first unit this year.

Through this agreement, Samsung C&T plans to participate in the early stages of the project, from the conceptual design (Pre-FEED∙Front-End Engineering Design) to the basic design (FEED) stage, which involves establishing the business structure, cost estimation, and site evaluation for the SMR construction promoted by Fermi Energy.

With this, Samsung C&T has secured a position to participate in the project as a key partner in advance, and has also secured an advantageous position in the final EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) contract that will follow. The two companies plan to begin full-scale business procedures as early as the second half of this year, and the project aims to be commercially operated in 2035.

Kim Jeong-eun, head of the nuclear power plant sales team at Samsung C&T (executive director), said, “We will strengthen our position as a global SMR player along with the successful promotion of Estonia’s first SMR project.”

Meanwhile, Samsung C&T is currently carrying out the basic design (FEED) for the Romanian SMR project, and following the business agreement signed with Swedish SMR developer Kanpool Next in December of last year, it is further accelerating the expansion of its nuclear power plant business in Europe with the addition of cooperation in the Estonia SMR project.