'Small Nuclear Plant Investment Scale' SK joins hands with Bill Gates ... Review of Terra Power et al.

Che Te-won, chairman of the SK Group. / News1 © News1 Reporter Eunna Ahn

(Seoul = News 1) Reporter Koo Gyo-woon = SK Group oversees investments in companies with small module nuclear power plants (SMRs) such as Thera Power, founded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

SK Group’s investment in the nuclear power plant business is known as one of its plans to achieve ‘Net Zero’ (Zero Carbon Emission).

“We are looking to get companies in the SMR sector to achieve a total zero,” he said, but no investment target or scale has been determined yet.

SMR refers to a nuclear power plant with a power generation capacity of 300MW or less. It is considered to be the next generation nuclear power plant due to its relatively high safety, low initial investment costs and short construction period.

SMR is expected to be used for a variety of purposes, including logistics, national defense, urban air mobility (UAM), and seawater desalination facilities through weight reduction. It can also be used for hydroelectric analysis, the core of the hydrogen economy. Accordingly, it is emerging as an alternative power generation tool for developed countries pursuing carbon neutrality.

Bill Gates also focused on this possibility, and began developing SMRs in 2006 with the establishment of Terra Power. In addition to the United States, more than 70 species are known to be developing in major countries such as Korea, China, Japan and France.

SK Group’s SMR investment incentive comes as a result of Chey Tae – won’s announcement last year that the SK Group will cut its carbon footprint by 200 million tonnes, which is 1% of the global carbon reduction target (21 billion tonnes) by 2030. ‘.

To this end, the SK Group pursues a ‘two track’ strategy of process improvement and new business investment. Efforts to improve the efficiency of existing businesses and use renewable energy will be reduced by 50 million tonnes and the remaining 150 million tonnes by investing in new eco-friendly industries such as electric vehicle batteries and hydrogen. Support from business partners.