Finland’s Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT) plans to build two safety test facilities for small modular reactors (SMRs) on its Lappeenranta campus in 2025-2026. One of the facilities will model the heat removal system of the LDR-50 district heating district heating reactor designed by Finnish company Steady Energy. The other facility will undertake tests on an unidentified French technology and will focus on the functionality of the SMR’s emergency core cooling tank.
The tests will take place from 2026 to 2027 and the results will be reported in 2027 to 2028.
The test facilities are to be built as part of the EASI-SMR work programme based on the European SMR pre-Partnership R&D roadmap, with a particular focus on passive systems. This is a €24m ($26m) four-year project co-funded by the European Union, which involved 38 partners in 16 countries.
“The research project advances Finnish technology and shows that our European partners value our expertise. The project is significant for LUT because it represents the largest EU funding ever awarded to a single project at the university,” said Joonas Telkkä, project researcher at LUT. “Experimental research plays an important role whenever the functionality of a new type of nuclear power plant safety system is verified. Our partners develop and validate their calculation models based on test results. There are hardly any other similar test capabilities in Europe.”
Steady Energy, spun out of the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in 2023, is developing the LDR-50 small modular reactor (SMR) with a thermal output of 50 MW, designed to operate at around 150°C. It is designed to only produce heat and is focused on district heating, as well as industrial steam production and desalination projects. The LDR-50 district heating SMR has been under development at VTT since 2020.
The reactor design is currently being assessed by the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority Steady Energy has already signed agreements for 15 reactors in Finland and aims to begin constructing the first plant in 2029.
Earlier in March, Steady Energy secured €22m in funding led by Copenhagen based 92 Ventures. This funding brings the company very close to completing its B-round.
