On the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Turkey, the United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Japan Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu, and Republic of Korea Foreign Minister Cho Hyun signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) to establish a framework for trilateral cooperation on accelerating small modular reactor (SMR) deployments in other countries, with an initial focus on the Indo-Pacific.
Rubio announced that the United States is committing over $10 million in new funding for the Department of State’s Foundational Infrastructure for Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (FIRST) Program to provide technical support to countries in the Indo-Pacific region for the deployment. The three nations also announced an industry initiative agreed upon among GE Vernova, Hitachi, Samsung C&T, and SGE to advance deployment of the BWRX-300 SMR across Europe. The BWRX-300 is a GE Vernova Hitachi PowerPoint. now under construction in Canada. Construction of the first unit is estimated to be completed by the end of 2029 and in commercial operation by the end of 2030.
