Swedish project developer Kärnfull Next has announced a new candidate site for small modular reactors (SMRs) in Valdemarsvik Municipality. The large coastal site in Östergötland is part of the company’s Re:Firm South SMR programme for southern Sweden.
In August 2023, Nyköping was announced as another candidate site within the programme, and further feasibility studies are expected to reach sufficient maturity levels to be announced later this year. If Valdemarsvik is selected as the first municipality for Re:Firm South, the plan is for the first kilowatt-hours of clean and reliable electricity from the SMR park to be delivered in the first half of the 2030s.
“This site has potential to become a key component in our programme to supply large amounts of stable and sustainable energy to regions with significant capacity needs and create substantial economic and social benefits for the local communities”, said Kärnfull Next CEO Christian Sjölander.
Kärnfull Next has entered into an exclusive partnership agreement with landowner Latona Group for exploration rights for nuclear power on the Valdemarsvik Målma property. The ongoing study is expected to be finalised after the summer. It has shown promising preliminary results leading the companies to jointly inform the municipality, site neighbours and now the general public about the plans.
With over 1300 hectares in total, the site is appealing for co-location with 2030s energy-intensive industries, such as AI data centres. The project in Valdemarsvik offers significant opportunities for local job creation – a single SMR is estimated to create around five hundred direct and indirect jobs a year for 70 years.
The SMR park in Valdemarsvik is initially planned to host between four and six small light water reactors, adding between 10-15 terawatt-hours (TWh) of clean firm electricity production per year. As a reference, Sweden’s existing nuclear fleet produced 47 TWh of electricity last year.
Kärnfull Next has been conducting site selection and feasibility studies in several municipalities in Sweden since 2022. By establishing multiple SMR parks as part of the same programme, the company expects to achieve economies of scale in terms of technology selection, construction partners, power purchase agreements (PPAs) and financing partners.
The announcement comes a few days after Kärnfull Next agreed a strategic partnership with Finland’s Steady Energy, a startup company spun out from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in 2023, to introduce SMRs for district heating in Sweden. Steady Energy is seeking to construct a heating plant in Finland based on its LDR-50 reactor technology.
