![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/news-p.v1.20260106.f995d14089ee40ef8b090870cee1bd15_P1.jpg\"\/ "\\"Korea,")
A model of a small modular reactor (SMR) displayed at “Smart Energy Plus 2025” held at COEX in Seoul’s Gangnam district last year. Yonhap News<\/p>\nA model of a small modular reactor (SMR) displayed at “Smart Energy Plus 2025” held at COEX in Seoul’s Gangnam district last year. Yonhap News<\/p>\n
The Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) on the Deployment of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), signed by the foreign ministers of Korea, the United States, and Japan in Ankara, Turkey, on the 7th (local time), represents an attempt to seize the SMR market through standardization and economies of scale. Unlike the existing nuclear reactor market, the SMR sector is a newly emerging market, and the agreement is seen as the result of the industrial and security interests of the three nations aligning across the board.<\/p>\n
According to diplomatic sources, the three nations plan to discuss establishing SMR-related standards through the MoC. Designing a standard reactor model in line with nuclear power’s 3S (safety, security, and non-proliferation) requires determining, for example, the thickness of the reactor vessel for physical protection. To this end, not only the foreign ministries of the three nations that led the MoC but also their energy and industry ministries are expected to naturally join future consultations.<\/p>\n
The three nations plan to adopt such a standard reactor model and provide various forms of support to companies entering the SMR market in the Indo-Pacific region. Support is expected in areas such as forming consortiums among companies of the three nations, financing and capacity building for projects in importing countries, and technology, fuel, equipment, and services. Korea, the US, and Japan will first continue cooperation within the Indo-Pacific region, while keeping in mind future expansion to other regions.<\/p>\n
Experts analyze that the interests of Korea, the US, and Japan have aligned over the SMR market, an imminent future market. Although the three nations compete with one another in the existing nuclear reactor market, SMRs have yet to be commercialized, allowing them to focus on their mutual complementarity and synergy effects. It is expected that if the strengths of Korea’s construction capabilities, the US’s original technology, and Japan’s finance and precision components come together and economies of scale are created, they will be able to quickly seize the initiative in the future SMR market.<\/p>\n
A sense of crisis that China and Russia are dominating the nuclear reactor markets of developing countries, such as those in Africa, is also cited as a factor uniting Korea, the US, and Japan. The US halted nuclear reactor construction after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, and Japan did so after the Fukushima accident in 2011. In the meantime, Russian and Chinese companies, which have everything from uranium mining to nuclear reactor construction technology within a single firm, are increasing their share in the global market using price competitiveness as a weapon. The US is keenly monitoring the expanding influence of Russia and China, based on factors such as the fact that nuclear reactors involve long-term contracts for fuel supply, operation, and maintenance even after construction, and the outlook that energy supply chains and AI leadership will determine global hegemony.<\/p>\n
In this process, Korea is expected to have an opportunity to catch up in the SMR field, where it lags somewhat behind competitor nations. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained that “the goal is to create an SMR deployment model that reduces risk factors in the project development process, achieves economies of scale, promotes private investment, streamlines licensing procedures, and optimizes supply chains.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A model of a small modular reactor (SMR) displayed at “Smart Energy Plus 2025” held at COEX in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[44491,44489,44487,44490,44488,112,9104,44486],"class_list":["post-83031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seoul","tag-china-russia-nuclear-competition","tag-indo-pacific-nuclear-market","tag-korea-us-japan-cooperation","tag-nuclear-3s","tag-nuclear-standardization","tag-seoul","tag-small-modular-reactor","tag-smr-alliance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}