Halden is fourth possible location announced by Norsk Kjernekraft
Norway’s Halden Kjernekraft has signed a letter of intent with the owner of a plot of land identified as a possible location for the construction of a nuclear power station based on small modular reactors.
Parent company Norsk Kjernekraft said in a press release that the facility proposed for Halden, a town in southeast Norway close to the Swedish border, could consist of up to four SMRs with a total installed capacity of 1,200 MW and annual production of 10 TWh.
Bergen-based Norsk Kjernekraft was set up to build SMRs for data centres and other power-intensive industries.
The company’s chairman, Jonny Hesthammer, said the Halden site, midway between Oslo and Gothenburg, could be suitable for data centres.
The company said the next phase of the project will be to notify the Ministry of Energy and prepare for an “assessment programme”.
Halden Kjernekraft is 20% owned by Halden municipality, with nuclear company Norsk Kjernekraft and electric utility Ostfold Energi owning 40% each. It was set up in November 2023 to investigate the construction of a nuclear power plant using SMR technology.
The initiative to investigate the deployment of SMRs at Halden came from the municipality itself, which has more than 60 years of experience of hosting the Institute for Energy Technology’s nuclear fuel and materials testing reactor. That facility was permanently shut down in June 2018.
Halden is the fourth possible location announced by Norsk Kjernekraft for a nuclear power plant. The company is also involved in potential projects in Heim, in western Norway, Vardo in the far north of the country, and Oygarden, in the southwest.
Norway has never had commercial nuclear power plants, but has operated two research reactors for the production of medical radioisotopes and research purposes.
