Turkish utility to cooperate with Rolls-Royce in SMRs

The MoU commits to a study that will look at the technical, licensing, commercial and investment cases for the deployment of Rolls-Royce's SMR; potential construction processes; and market potential in Turkey and globally. The agreement will see phased collaboration during the next two years.

Rolls-Royce and its consortium partners have designed the UK SMR, a small pressurised water reactor that they say will be able to operate for 60 years and provide 400–450 MWe. To minimise the construction phase of the programme, the UK SMR is fully modularised to enable the plant to be transported by road, rail or sea. Targeting a 500-day modular build, they say this concept minimises the onsite time and effort required to construct and build the plant. The target cost for each station is GBP1.8 billion (USD2.1 billion) by the time five have been built, with further savings possible, they say.

The consortium comprises Assystem, Atkins, BAM Nuttall, Laing O'Rourke, National Nuclear Laboratory, Rolls-Royce, Jacobs, the Welding Institute and Nuclear AMRC.

"Our power station is affordable, fast to deploy and is an attractive investment that will stimulate tens of thousands of jobs regionally and embed prosperity and quality of life for decades to come," said David Orr, consortium director, Rolls-Royce. "Turkey's domestic and regional nuclear power opportunities are incredibly exciting, and we look forward to exploring how our consortium's power station will support its energy, economic and industrial ambitions."

EUAS International ICC CEO Yahya Yılmaz Bayraktarlı added, "Our vision is to diversify electricity resources with nuclear power. We aim to develop a sustainable nuclear industry, which contributes to economic growth and social wealth of the country. Turkey is already developing large-scale nuclear power plants with its international partners. Competitiveness in price is an important indicator for us. The feasibility of small modular reactors is a research and development issue we continuously monitor."

Rolls-Royce and its partners have said a UK SMR programme could contribute GBP100 billion to the UK economy. There have already been expressions of interest from other countries, Roll-Royce has previously said, reinforcing the consortium's confidence in the potential scale of the export opportunity, which it says could be more than GBP250 billion.