News - Rolls-Royce Expands European SMR Footprint with Swedish Deal

Rolls-Royce SMR has secured its third crucial European contract. The Swedish utility Vattenfall, along with its company Videberg Kraft, has selected the UK-designed small modular reactors (SMRs) for three new units on Sweden's west coast. This marks Sweden's first new nuclear project in over forty years. This initiative, worth several billion pounds and strongly supported by UK trade efforts, follows previous agreements in the UK and the Czech Republic, establishing Rolls-Royce as the sole SMR developer with multiple binding commitments across Europe. The UK has advanced its nuclear energy ambitions under the Great British Energy – Nuclear program by forming a deal with Rolls-Royce earlier this year to initiate SMR units at Wylfa in North Wales. Czech utility company CEZ is already part of an early works agreement for deploying SMRs at Temelin, hoping to achieve up to 3 GW from Rolls-Royce and securing a 20% stake in its SMR subsidiary. The Swedish contract, announced shortly after Rolls-Royce's collaboration with the UK National Nuclear Laboratory and Japan's JAEA, aims to advance High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTGR) technology and its associated next-generation coated particle fuel. This effort complements the ongoing 470 MWe pressurized-water SMR projects, using different reactor technology but adhering to the same modular construction and supply-chain strategies. The UK has a historical legacy of pioneering advanced nuclear fuel types, and the announcement of coated particle fuel—credited for its enhanced accident tolerance and high-temperature resilience in gas reactors—draws from the UK's innovative beginnings in the 1960s Dragon reactor program. TRISO fuel, developed from these initial concepts, is set to be upgraded and manufactured in partnership with Rolls-Royce and its allies. In the US, Rolls-Royce is collaborating with BWXT's Project Pele, a Department of Defense initiative to deploy a mobile microreactor using TRISO fuel, expected to be operational by 2028. While these strategic projects highlight Rolls-Royce's potential, similar to other Western reactor developers, turning these plans into active nuclear infrastructure remains challenging. As groundwork progresses in the UK, the delays seen in larger reactor projects underscore the complexities and extended timelines of achieving new nuclear installations.