[Courtesy of Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction]
SEOUL -- Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction, a key contractor in South Korea's nuclear power industry, and partners have invested an additional $60 million in NuScale Power, an American small modular reactor company, and agreed to expand cooperation to the field of hydrogen production and desalination.
Doosan Heavy and South Korean investors made a $44 million equity investment in NuScale in 2019. Doosan Heavy would join the construction of NuScale's small modular reactor (SMR) and supply reactor modules, a key instrument for the power plant under development for Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS). Commercial operation of the first module is expected to begin in 2029.
"Through this additional investment, Doosan and NuScale Power will further solidify their strategic cooperative relationship," Doosan Heavy CEO Park Gee-won said in a statement on Jul 20. Doosan Heavy received an order for a manufacturability review service from NuScale in 2019 and completed it in January 2021.
NuScale, based in Portland, Oregon, designs and markets SMRs, based on a safer, smaller, and scalable version of pressurized water reactor technology. With NuScale's scalable design, a power plant can house up to 12 individual power modules. It houses the reactor core, pressurizer and steam generator inside a single containment vessel.
"Doosan’s expertise in heavy manufacturing will be invaluable as we move forward with the construction of our first NuScale Power Plant at the Idaho National Laboratory in just a few years," said NuScale Power Chairman John Hopkins.
Doosan Heavy, which builds power plants, turbines and generators, said it would accelerate the development of SMR manufacturing technology. SMRs have been studied to address the limitations of traditional light-water reactors using low-enriched uranium that cost a lot to replace nuclear fuel and require a vast emergency evacuation zone, nonproliferation and waste management. Small reactors designed with modular technology allow for less on-site construction, increased containment efficiency, and enhanced safety.
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