[CAPTIONS] Chung Ki-sun (right), chairman of HD Hyundai, meets with Bill Gates, founder and chairman of TerraPower, in August last year to discuss cooperation on the SMR business. /HD Hyundai - Seoul Economic Daily Finance News from South Korea[CAPTIONS]
Chung Ki-sun (right), chairman of HD Hyundai, meets with Bill Gates, founder and chairman of TerraPower, in August last year to discuss cooperation on the SMR business. /HD Hyundai

HD Hyundai (267250) Chairman Chung Ki-sun met with Bill Gates, founder and chairman of TerraPower, to discuss ways to work together in seizing an early lead in the U.S. market for small modular reactors (SMRs).

Chung, Gates, TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque and Hyundai Engineering & Construction (000720) CEO Lee Han-woo met in Seoul on the 14th to discuss technical cooperation, HD Hyundai said.

The three companies signed a partnership in May to jointly commercialize the “Natrium reactor,” a next-generation SMR based on sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) technology. Under the arrangement, TerraPower provides the Natrium technology, HD Hyundai handles manufacturing of the main equipment, and Hyundai Engineering & Construction takes on the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) work.

It was the first time the top executives of the three companies had gathered together since signing the three-way agreement. At the meeting, Chung and the others reviewed the progress of their cooperation and discussed ways to work together toward commercializing land-based reactors. “Based on a cooperation framework spanning technology, manufacturing and EPC, we expect to accelerate the commercialization of next-generation reactors,” Chung said. “Through our own technology development and collaboration with global companies, we will actively respond to rising demand for SMR power generation.”

HD Hyundai has been defining the scope of its supply-chain cooperation and plans to make advance investments in production facilities, aiming to build a system that can supply 2-3 reactor vessels a year.

The United States, with about 95 gigawatts of capacity, is the world’s largest nuclear power market, accounting for roughly 25% of the global total. Interest in SMRs is rising as demand looms for replacing aging reactors that began operating in the 1970s, while the recent spread of artificial intelligence has driven a surge in data centers and, with it, a sharp rise in electricity demand.

HD Hyundai began investing in TerraPower in 2022 and, in December 2024, won an order to build the cylindrical reactor vessel used in the Natrium reactor. In March last year, it signed a strategic agreement with TerraPower to expand the manufacturing supply chain and spent about a year jointly studying manufacturing feasibility, price competitiveness and delivery schedules. Building on those results, HD Hyundai was named in May this year as the preferred bidder to build and supply core equipment for the main components of TerraPower’s Natrium reactor.