Dutch province creates nuclear energy alliance to support energy transition with SMRs

The Dutch province of Limburg created a regional nuclear energy alliance to find out how SMRs could benefit their energy transition, writes Patrick Bauduin.

With a growing need for emission-free energy, interest in Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) is growing fast across the world, both internationally and locally.

Seventy SMR designs are currently under development globally and not only national governments are investigating the potential of SMRs.

Local authorities are now actively investigating the potential of nuclear energy in their energy mix.

An example is the Dutch Province of Limburg, where the local politicians cannot hide their enthusiasm when it comes to the potential of SMRs.

Actually, they are taking a unique and proactive approach to include stakeholders in their journey towards the energy mix of the future, in which SMRs could play a massive role.

On the 13th of April, the province of Limburg presented an alliance of partners from all kinds of backgrounds that together will work on the question of how SMRs can power the region and contribute to the regional energy transition.

In the Alliance participate energy companies such as Tractebel, Last Energy, ULC Energy and EPZ, but also companies in the nuclear value chain, like Urenco and NRG.

In addition, the Alliance was also joined by large energy user Chemelot (a large chemical industry complex) and investor in infrastructure and development ‘Invesis’, as well as the world’s first citizen-driven energy cooperative ‘Atoomcoöperation’.

The goal of the Alliance is to involve everyone in the process. The Alliance will actively work on gaining and exchanging knowledge that is relevant to the deployment of SMRs.

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What the Province thinks

The province expects that the need for electricity will grow exponentially in the next decade. And of course, on the one side, nobody wants oil and gas from Russia and on the other, renewables are not going to be able to provide all this reliable energy.

To illustrate the challenge ahead, Chemelot director Loek Radix, mentioned that the gigantic solar park at the Chemical industry complex is developed, but is good for only one per mile of Chemelots current energy needs.

To get all the energy they need, they would need a solar park that covers over 10% of the entire province, which is impossible.

“And we need energy 24/7”, he adds. “To make things worse, we expect that our energy need will become four times bigger than it currently is. Without a permanent power supply that an SMR can give us, we have a problem.”