WARSAW (Reuters) -Polish oil company Orlen will build the country’s first small nuclear power plant in the central town of Wloclawek, it said on Thursday, adding that it had reached an agreement with its project partner, chemical company Synthos.
State-controlled Orlen, Poland’s largest Polish fuel company, aims by 2035 to have at least two small modular reactors (SMRs) with a total capacity of 0.6 GW, as Warsaw works to reduce dependence on fossil fuels to cut carbon emissions.
Orlen’s Chief Executive Ireneusz Fafara said the BWRX-300 nuclear plant would be the first of its kind in Europe.
“We are building the energy of tomorrow,” Fafara said in a statement.
Orlen and Synthos will establish a new entity called OSGE to implement the project, in which they will each hold a 50% stake.
In 2023, Poland gave the green light for the construction of 24 small modular reactor (SMR) units across six sites.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish and Pawel Florkiewicz;Editing by Helen Popper)
