GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) has signed a nuclear power plant memorandum of understanding with Boccard and Cavendish Nuclear, both engineering firms in the United Kingdom, to develop advanced and small nuclear projects.
The MoUs highlight GEH’s aim to work with suppliers in the UK, leveraging their expertise in the construction and delivery of nuclear power plants in order to develop and operate GEH’s BWRX-300 Small Modular Reactor (SMR), as it continues to progress through Great British Nuclear’s (GBN) SMR selection competition. The agreements follow GEH’s previous collaborations with Aecon, AtkinsRéalis, Jacobs and Laing O’Rourke.
“These MoUs with Boccard and Cavendish Nuclear strengthen our commitment to working with the UK nuclear supply chain to deliver our BWRX-300 SMR technology in the UK,” said Andy Champ, GE Hitachi UK Country Lead, in a statement. “By combining their expertise with our extensive experience working in partnership with Ontario Power Generation (OPG) on the Darlington project in Canada, we're well positioned to reliably deliver this technology for the best value for money.
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The BWRX-300 is a small, water-cooled reactor which the original joint venture of General Electric and Hitachi have worked on for more than a decade. GE Hitachi Nuclear hopes to start construction on installing the SMR sometime in the middle of this decade and has estimated it can build those for about $1 billion per project, according to reports.
The MoU with Cavendish Nuclear, a wholly owned subsidiary of Babcock International, is not only supported by work on advanced manufacturing and operational readiness delivered under the UK Government’s Future Nuclear Enabling Fund but also on the existing relationship GEH has with Cavendish Nuclear in support of the regulatory approval of the BWRX-300 through the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) process.
In Canada, GEH and OPG are developing the BWRX-300 at Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington site near Toronto which is anticipated to be a commercial SMR in the G7. While early site preparation work has been completed, construction of the first unit is expected to start by the end of 2025, pending regulatory approval, and commercial operation is predicted to begin by the end of 2029. A total of four 300 MW units are planned for the Darlington site.
GE Hitachi Nuclear is part of GE Vernova, the power division of General Electric which was spun off into a separately traded company last year.
The company also has engineering and SMR development deals around the BWRX-300 in the U.S., Poland and Sweden.
