EIB makes its first SMR investment: up to €40m for heat-only Steady Energy
Serguey Asael Shinder2 min readThe European Investment Bank is to invest up to EUR40 million in Steady Energy, a Finnish developer of small modular reactors, World Nuclear News reports. It is the bank's first investment in an SMR technology.
The terms are those of a venture-style financing rather than a project loan. The money is a senior unsecured convertible loan, giving the EIB the option to convert into listed shares in the future, and supports Steady Energy's research and development, testing and licensing between this year and 2028. EIB Group Vice-President Karl Nehammer said the bank is actively looking to support Europe's most promising SMR pioneers; the bank says the investment is in line with the European Commission's aim to bring the first SMRs online in the early 2030s.
Steady Energy was spun out of Finland's VTT Technical Research Centre in 2023. Its LDR-50 reactor, with a thermal output of 50 MW and an operating temperature of around 150°C, produces only heat - not electricity - for district heating, industrial steam and desalination. The company has agreements for 15 reactors in Finland, Finland's radiation safety authority STUK has assessed the concept, and it aims to start building the first plant in 2029. Its chief executive, Tommi Nyman, notes that more than 40% of final energy demand is heat, most of it still from fossil fuels.
What it means
For nuclear finance, the signal matters more than the sum. The EIB is owned by the 27 EU member states, which disagree about nuclear power, and it long limited itself to nuclear safety projects. In the past year it has lent for a Romanian reactor refurbishment and an enrichment expansion in France; this is its first bet on new reactor technology, and on a pre-revenue company.
The choice of a heat-only design is telling. District heat is a market where a small reactor competes with gas boilers and heat pumps rather than with the wholesale power price, and where a simpler, low-temperature design may be easier to license. A convertible loan lets the bank share in the upside if that proves right, and limits its exposure if it does not.