US engineering and construction company Fluor Corporation and RoPower have signed an agreement that will position Romania’s small modular reactor (SMR) project to move to a final investment decision and construction with deployment targeted for 2029.
The US embassy in Romania said in a statement that the agreement, signed on 24 July, was for the second phase of the front-end engineering and design (Feed) study for an SMR plant using NuScale’s Voygr SMR technology.
Fluor is the majority investor in Oregon-based SMR developer NuScale. Since 2011 it has invested more than $600m (€552m) in NuScale to help bring the Voygr technology to market. RoPower is the state company set up by Bucharest to develop the SMR project.
Fluor also announced the establishment of an office in Bucharest to carry out the work.
NuScale and RoPower signed a contract for Feed work towards the deployment of a Voygr plant at Doicesti, a former coal site in central Romania, in January 2023.
The contract followed the signing of a memorandum of understanding between NuScale and Romania’s state nuclear company Nuclearelectrica to begin engineering studies, technical reviews, and licensing and permitting activities for the project.
The first phase of the Feed study was completed in late 2023 with funding from the US Trade and Development Agency, US Department of State, the government of Romania and NuScale Power.
The US embassy said in a statement that the US is committed to supporting the use of advanced nuclear technologies to power global decarbonisation efforts and provide energy security to partners around the world.
In November 2023 RoPower confirmed its commitment to proposed projects using SMR technology in the wake of an announcement by NuScale of the cancellation of its pilot Voygr demonstrator plant in the US.
