Development Company
ULC-Energy is a nuclear development company focussed exclusively on The Netherlands. ULC-Energy brings together everything that is necessary for the successful realisation of new nuclear projects. This includes coordinating a location, an operator, relevant licences, shareholders, funding, a customer for the output of the SMR and the commercial contracts associated with the realisation of the power plant. ULC-Energy does not intend to do all of this by ourselves and have entered into a number of cooperation agreements with strategic partners.
As The Netherlands decarbonises its economy, the demand for clean energy will increase tremendously and a significant portion of this demand will require continuous supply of affordable clean energy. A nuclear power plant can deliver clean energy continuously with an average capacity factor of 95% and importantly the vast majority of downtime will be related to scheduled maintenance and refuelling and therefore can be planned.
In its early assessment ULC-Energy concluded that it would focus on proven technology and proven fuel SMRs given their mature technology risk profile, established supply chains and manufacturing benefits. ULC-Energy also observed that the leading independent nuclear utilities preferred these same larger light water reactor SMRs over alternatives. In 2022 we selected Rolls-Royce SMR on the basis of a set of objective criteria listed here below.
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Selection Criteria
Safety is the starting point for anything we do at ULC-Energy. With the Dutch authority for nuclear permitting, the ANVS, we have a formidable department that houses specialists on nuclear technology especially related to safety.
ULC-Energy focuses for the deployment of SMRs in on commercially proven reactor technology and proven fuel from credible vendors – this means light water reactors in the form of pressurised water reactors or boiling water reactors. Together these constitute the vast majority of operational reactors globally.
At ULC-Energy we believe that advanced reactor technologies are exciting and promising based on their theoretical benefits. However, these technologies have at best been proven in research settings and have not been proven or deployed commercially. There are no established supply chains and procedures. There is no established fuel chain. There is little certainty how regulators internationally are going to consider these advanced technologies.
We concluded that to pursue our objective to realise new capacity in The Netherlands we best choose something that we know, that has been optimised rigorously over the past 50+ years, with fuel we can purchase today if we want, with established supply chains. The industry will need to build out its manufacturing capacity, but we know what to do, what it will look like and how we can get the permits for what we want to do.
Secondly the credibility of the technology vendor was a threshold criterium. There are several really smart SMR concepts but commercialising an SMR concept takes more than a smart idea. We looked specifically for those vendors that have the ability to scale up SMR production and bring manufacturing excellence right into the concept design.
Subsequently we applied the following selection criteria.
Modular – to ensure manufacturing process upside can be captured
Economics – a coherent strategy to ensure economic performance
Size – history has shown us the bigger Nuclear power plants were built the lower the unit cost of energy. We also simply need a lot of clean energy
Concept readiness – our aim is to deploy as soon as we reasonably can. We don’t want to rush. We were looking for concepts that were well thought through and advanced in readiness
Organisational priority – We wanted the SMR product to be an organizational priority of the vendor to ensure focus and commitment and avoid conflicts of interest
Fit for licensing – we wanted to avoid concepts that require a lot of explaining to regulators or contain significant elements of technology innovation as these can lead to licensing uncertainty
Turnkey contract – we believe the best product will be one where vendor and customer are aligned in the success of the project. Vendors that incorporate the concept of a turnkey contract – ie the vendor makes a real commitment to deliver the power plant we want to build. This also included an assessment of the rationale how the vendor manages this risk.
Our Partners
Rolls-Royce has been a nuclear reactor plant designer since the start of the UK nuclear submarine programme in the 1950s. Rolls-Royce SMR, a Rolls-Royce subsidiary, will draw upon standard nuclear energy technology that has been used in 400 reactors around the world.
The Rolls-Royce SMR power station will have the capacity to generate 470MW of low carbon energy, equivalent to more than 150 onshore wind turbines. It will provide consistent baseload generation for at least 60 years, helping to support the roll out of renewable generation and overcome intermittency issues.
Constellation (Nasdaq: CEG) is the nation’s largest producer of carbon-free energy and the leading competitive retail supplier of power and energy products and services for homes and businesses across the United States. Headquartered in Baltimore, its generation fleet powers more than 20 million homes and businesses and is helping to accelerate the nation’s transition to clean energy with more than 32,400 megawatts of capacity and annual output that is 90 percent carbon-free. Constellation has set a goal to eliminate 100 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions by leveraging innovative technology and enhancing its diverse mix of hydro, wind and solar resources paired with the nation’s largest carbon-free nuclear fleet. Constellation’s family of retail businesses serves approximately 2 million residential, public sector and business customers, including three-fourths of the Fortune 100.
BAM Infra Nederland is active in infrastructure construction in the Netherlands for more than 150 years. It focusses on present and future generations. It is committed to realise a connected, safe and attractive Netherlands. BAM Infra Nederland is a subsidiary of the Royal BAM Group.