Tuesday, 27 May 2025
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The agreement, signed during a private ceremony on the sidelines of the World Utilities Congress in Abu Dhabi, UAE, builds on a memorandum of understanding signed during the COP28 conference in 2023 to evaluate the technology as part of ENEC’s ADVANCE programme. The two companies have committed to explore opportunities for international deployment by collaborating on a development roadmap to include site identification, licensing pathways, investment and commercialisation strategies, and supply chain development.
“As we continue to power the UAE with clean, baseload electricity around the clock, we are glad to move to the next level of cooperation with GE Vernova Hitachi to accelerate the deployment of new advanced nuclear reactor technologies in the UAE and internationally,” ENEC Managing Director and CEO Mohamed Al Hammadi said. “This MoU will bring together our complementary expertise to identify a clear roadmap for deployment, which is essential to ensure safe, efficient and quality-led nuclear delivery, as we have experienced here in the UAE. As global power demand continues to grow at pace, we look forward to advancing new solutions to meet this growth in a sustainable manner.”
Maví Zingoni, CEO of GE Vernova’s Power Businesses, said the company was pleased to advance its collaboration with ENEC as the UAE seeks to be an early mover for nuclear innovation. “With projects moving forward in Canada and in the United States, collaborating with ENEC further strengthens our ties with the UAE and ability to deliver this technology and achieve a more sustainable energy future,” she said.
Teams from ENEC and GE Vernova Hitachi (GVH) will now work together to evaluate and develop a comprehensive roadmap for deployment of the BWRX-300.
ENEC brings significant expertise following the successful deployment of civil nuclear energy to the UAE’s grid as the developer and operator of the four-unit Barakah nuclear power plant, having brought each unit of the plant onto the grid in a “highly efficient” 7.9 years. GE Vernova’s Nuclear Power business, through its global alliance with Hitachi, is a provider of nuclear fuel bundles, services, and advanced nuclear reactor designs, and describes the BWRX-300 as “one of the simplest, yet most innovative boiling water reactor designs”.
The BWRX-300 design is a 300 MWe water-cooled, natural circulation small modular reactor (SMR) with passive safety systems that leverages the design and licensing basis of the ESBWR boiling water reactor developed by GE Hitachi. GVH says it will be the first SMR to be built in the western world: this month, the Canadian province of Ontario approved the construction of the first BWRX-300 at Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington site, while the Tennessee Valley Authority submitted an application for construction of a BWRX-300 at Clinch River, near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to US regulators.
