South Korea, through the Korea Overseas Infrastructure & Urban Development (KIND) Corporation, has awarded funding to DL Energy and DL Engineering & Construction, in cooperation with Norsk Kjernekraft, for a Norwegian SMR Development & Operation Project Preliminary Feasibility Study in the industrial area of Mongstad in Austrheim municipality outside Bergen.
KIND was established in June 2018 by the government of South Korea to proactively support global Public-Private Partnership (PPP) business, its shareholders including the South Korean government and Korea’s Eximbank. KIND supports companies for project planning, feasibility studies, project information and project bankability.
The Mongstad SMR study was among 15 projects considered for funding by KIND in its 2024 grant cycle, the top four projects are awarded funding. The Norsk Kjernekraft/DL Energy/DL E&C project was selected for the final award, along with three other competitive renewables and infrastructure projects. It is the first SMR-related pre-feasibility study to be financed by KIND.
The grant will support a preliminary feasibility study related to the construction and operation of SMRs in in Austrheim municipality. Specifically, the study will investigate the deployment of four of US X-Energy’s XE-100 reactors with an electrical output of 320 MW and potential expansion to 1 GW depending on future demand.
The Xe-100 is a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor with a thermal output of 200 MWt or an electrical output of 80 MWe. It can be scaled into a four-pack 320 MWe power plant, fuelled by the company’s proprietary TRISO-X tri-structural isotropic particle fuel. The Xe-100 evolved from both the UK’s Dragon reactor at Winfrith in Dorset and the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor project in South Africa. X-energy was selected by the US Department of Energy (DOE) in 2020 to receive up to $1.2bn in matching funds under the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) to develop, license, build, and demonstrate an operational advanced reactor and fuel fabrication facility by the end of the decade. X-Energy has since completed the reactor engineering and basic design and is developing a fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge in Tennessee.
Norsk Kjernekraft CEO Jonny Hesthammerstated: “It is incredibly exciting that South Korea, with its long track record of safe and successful nuclear construction and operation, shows such strong interest and belief in the future of nuclear power in Norway that they will fund this preliminary feasibility study for X-Energy SMR’s in Austrheim.”
Dmitri Baek, Director of Head of Hydrogen & SMR Business Development at DL Energy: “We believe this signifies public sector’s buoying interest in SMR integration into the power system. With the help of Norsk Kjernekraft and global professionals, DL would make the best effort to thoroughly review the feasibility of SMR under the Norwegian context in this study.”
The study will assess a wide range of issues including the physical site land area, the electricity and transmission market, regulatory framework, investment costs and technical analysis. Completion of the study is planned for 2025 and will support concrete next steps in the project development.
