Nuward aims to start building the first of ten European SMRs in 2030
Victoria Shinder2 min readAt a side event of the IAEA General Conference in Vienna, Nuward chief executive Julien Garrel set out a schedule for EDF's small modular reactor. With the design now complete, the company intends to develop a first European series of ten units across five European countries: commercialisation before 2029, construction starting in 2030, first production in 2035. The build time assumed for each unit is 48 months.
Garrel named Italy, Poland, Belgium and Finland among the countries where discussions have taken place, and framed the programme in explicitly European terms — the aim, in his words, is not a French technology but a European SMR, drawing on existing manufacturing facilities and fuel supply. The applications he described are industrial clusters and district heating, with load-following flexibility.
The same meeting heard that the European Industrial Alliance on SMRs has just closed a second call for projects and is assessing the applications, with around ten concrete SMR projects already in hand and more expected through further selection. The alliance's stated target is first SMRs operational in the EU in the early 2030s and between 17 and 53 GW of SMR capacity by 2050. On fuel, representatives of Urenco and Orano argued that Europe does not need to build a new fuel cycle for light-water reactors but to optimise the one it has, while for advanced reactors it must decide quickly which fuel technologies to back.
The Nuward project began in September 2019, launched by the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission with EDF, Naval Group and TechnicAtome. The design described is a 340 MWe plant built from two pressurised water reactors of 170 MWe each, and it was re-scoped in July 2024 after feedback from potential European customers.
What it means
The interesting number is 2030, and it is a construction start, not a connection. On the stated schedule, first production in 2035 follows a 48-month build — which leaves almost no slack between the two dates. Any slip in commercialisation moves the whole chain.
A fleet of ten across five countries is a licensing claim as much as an industrial one. Ten units in one country is a series; ten units in five countries is ten conversations with five regulators, each with its own review practice. European harmonisation work exists precisely because that arithmetic is the binding constraint on SMR economics, and nothing announced here changes it.
The alliance's 17–53 GW range is the honest part of the story. A spread of three times between the low and high case, on a 2050 horizon, is what a forecast looks like when the deployment rate is unknown. Read the Nuward schedule against that range rather than against the press release.
⚠ Vendor and alliance statements made at an industry event. The dates are targets announced by the parties with an interest in them; no regulator has committed to any of them.
Source: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/edfs-nuward-smr-planning-10-units-in-five-eu-countries