Project company Svalbard Kjernekraft has submitted a planning initiative for a Sealer small modular reactor (SMR) in Longyearbyen, a coal-mining town on Spitsbergen Island, in Norway’s isolated Svalbard archipelago.
The move marks the first formal step on the road towards building the facility, said Blykalla, the Swedish lead-cooled SMR technology developer that set up Svalbard Kjernekraft with Norwegian nuclear project developer Norsk Kjernekraft.
Blykalla said the planned Sealer reactor will replace a temporary diesel setup that was introduced after Longyearbyen’s coal power plant closed in 2023. The town’s last coal mine is also scheduled for closure.