Finnish university to test safety of SMR designs

One of the facilities - to be built over the next two years - will model passive decay heat removal of the LDR-50 district heating reactor developed by the Finnish company Steady Energy. The other facility will test the functionality of the emergency core cooling tank of an undisclosed small modular reactor (SMR) based on French technology.

The tests will take place from 2026-2027 and the results will be reported in 2027–2028, Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT) said.

The test facilities are to be built at the university under the EASI-SMR work programme, which is largely inspired by the European SMR pre-Partnership R&D roadmap, with a particular focus on passive systems. The EUR24 million (USD26 million) four-year project - co-funded by the European Union - involves 38 partners in 16 countries. It will address the safety issues associated with major light-water SMR innovations. An experimental programme using nine test facilities in Europe will be performed to investigate key physical phenomena in passive safety systems under both design basis and beyond design basis conditions.

"The research project advances Finnish technology and shows that our European partners value our expertise. The project is significant for LUT because it represents the largest EU funding ever awarded to a single project at the university," said Joonas Telkkä, project researcher at LUT. "Experimental research plays an important role whenever the functionality of a new type of nuclear power plant safety system is verified. Our partners develop and validate their calculation models based on test results. There are hardly any other similar testing capabilities in Europe."

"The research kicking off at LUT University will significantly advance the development of nuclear technology and our ongoing district heating projects," said Lauri Muranen, head of public affairs at Steady Energy. "The commercial breakthrough of small modular reactors is closer in heating than in electricity production, because small nuclear power plants producing district heating do not need public financing."

Steady Energy was spun out of VTT in 2023 and is developing the LDR-50 SMR with a thermal output of 50 MW, designed to operate at around 150°C. Unlike most SMRs being developed around the world, it is not designed to generate electricity - or electricity and heat. Instead, it is designed to only produce heat and is focused on district heating, as well as industrial steam production and desalination projects.

The company has already signed agreements for 15 reactors in Finland, with its reactor design currently being assessed by the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority. The aim is for construction of the first plant - to be the clean energy source for a district heating scheme - to begin in 2029. Steady Energy is also marketing its solution to other European countries, such as Poland.