Item 1 of 3 Finland’s Minister of Climate and the Environment, Sari Multala, lays the first concrete below to the site of Steady Energy’s pilot plant for nuclear heat generation as CEO of Steady Energy, Tommi Nyman, looks on at a decommissioned power and heat plant in Helsinki, Finland, February 12, 2026. Picture taken with a phone. REUTERS/Anne Kaurane
HELSINKI, Feb 12 (Reuters) – Finnish nuclear development group Steady Energy has begun building a pilot plant in Helsinki that aims to pave the way for Europe’s first small nuclear heat reactor, the company said on Thursday.
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The company is building its shipping-container-sized 50-megawatt pilot plant to test the technology without loading nuclear fuel inside a decommissioned power and heat plant near the centre of Helsinki.
“We are first of a kind in Europe in small nuclear heat projects,” CEO Tommi Nyman told Reuters.
Nyman said the company was targeting low-heat generation, which is simpler to manage than nuclear power production, and plans to bury its final reactors underground for safety.
“Our plant-supplier tender process currently includes about half a dozen Western plant suppliers, among them reactors that produce heat only as well as those that generate electricity and heat,” Helen Nuclear CEO Pekka Tolonen told Reuters.
The pilot plant has a budget of 20 million euros ($24 million), while the final nuclear version would cost around 100 million euros per unit, Nyman said.
($1 = 0.8415 euros)
Reporting by Anne Kauranen in Helsinki. Editing by Mark Potter
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