Hyundai Engineering and Construction, South Korea’s second-largest contractor after Samsung, is to open an office in Poland in a bid to supply the country with small modular reactors (SMRs).
Aju Korea Daily reports that the Warsaw office will be opened by the end of the year.
The new office would also be a bridgehead into the Baltic States, Romania, Czechia, Hungary, and Slovakia.
The company is networking with Polish institutions and companies to help it compete in the region’s nuclear, renewable energy, and infrastructure sectors.
The company announced last week that it had signed a “business agreement for new nuclear power projects” with the Polish Association of Construction Industry Employers. It also announced that it would carry out research in conjunction with Poland’s National Nuclear Research Centre.
In October last year, it signed an agreement with its American partner Holtec to participate in the detailed design of that engineer’s SMR-160 – a pressurised water reactor with a capacity of 160MW with the safety feature that it does not rely on pumps or motors to circulate coolant.
Hyundai also aims to build its office in Kyiv and participate in Ukraine’s energy infrastructure reconstruction project when circumstances permit.
