SK and SK Innovation announced today that they will promote global carbon reduction through business cooperation with next-generation Small Modular Reactor (SMR) companies.
According to SK, SK Vice Chairman Jang Dong-hyun and SK Innovation Vice Chairman Kim Jun signed an MOU for comprehensive business cooperation with Terra Power CEO Chris Levesque at the SK Seorin office building in Jongno, Seoul on May 17th.
SK plans to discover various business cooperation opportunities by linking Tera Power's next-generation SMR technology and radioisotope production capabilities with SK's business areas.
Joint technology development cooperation with SK and Tera Power, as well as domestic and overseas advancement and commercialization cooperation, are expected to help South Korean nuclear-related companies secure SMR core technology and foster related industries such as operation of next-generation nuclear power plants.
TerraPower was founded in 2008 by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and is an innovative company in the nuclear power plant industry with a Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor (SFR) design technology, a type of next-generation nuclear reactor.
SK has been continuously reviewing business opportunities in related areas since last year after its affiliates decided to implement Net-Zero to overcome the climate crisis.
SK, which announced its goal of contributing to a 1% reduction in global carbon reduction targets by 2030 last year, has been paying attention to the competitiveness of SMR as a safe power source without carbon emission.
Next-generation SMR is a nuclear power plant of 500 megawatts (MW) or less that has reduced power generation capacity and size compared to existing large-scale nuclear power plants.
It has high safety as it enables passive cooling in a natural circulation method without complicated safety devices. It also simplifies the design and construction method, reducing the cost of installation and operation.
