US SMR Developers Deepen EPC Partnerships to Reduce FOAK and Scaled Deployment Risks

Recently, US small modular reactor (SMR) developers have been accelerating the establishment of strategic partnerships with large engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) firms to address first-of-a-kind (FOAK) construction challenges and reduce deployment risks, thereby meeting the surging electricity demand from data centers.

It is understood that, as most SMR startups lack civil construction and site management experience for large industrial facilities, institutions such as the Breakthrough Institute recommend that developers partner with EPC giants possessing decades of nuclear power experience to compensate for shortcomings in concrete pouring, site grading, and on-site construction management. For example, Holtec selected Korea's Hyundai Engineering & Construction (HDEC) as the global construction partner for its SMR-300 project, X-energy reached a partnership with Fluor, and Oklo engaged Kiewit to handle engineering and construction for its Aurora power plant in Idaho.

In terms of advancing demonstration projects, Kairos Power, together with Barnard Construction and Korea's Samsung C&T, is adopting a phased "build-as-you-learn" approach to advance construction of the 50 MW Hermes 2 demonstration plant in Tennessee; TerraPower, while advancing the 345 MW Kemmerer demonstration plant in Wyoming, announced the selection of HDEC to handle construction of up to 8 future Natrium plants, in order to address supply chain bottlenecks such as heavy nuclear forgings and specialized valves.

Industry experts say that the transition from FOAK to fleet-scale batch deployment requires traversing a steep learning curve. Currently, companies such as NuScale, X-energy, TerraPower, and Kairos have built project execution frameworks with long-term aligned interests by bringing in equity investment from EPC giants and tripartite cooperation agreements, laying the foundation for commercial application of advanced nuclear energy in the 2030s.