HD Hyundai Chairman to Meet Bill Gates to Advance SMR Cooperation

HD Hyundai Chairman Chung Ki-sun will meet Bill Gates, who is visiting South Korea, on August 14, with the two sides planning discussions on cooperation in small modular reactors (SMRs). Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, also serves as chairman of TerraPower, a U.S. small modular reactor company.

This will be the latest round of communication between Chung and Gates on related cooperation, following their meeting earlier this year at the Davos Forum in Switzerland. HD Hyundai and TerraPower have been steadily strengthening cooperation in SMR and advanced reactor manufacturing in recent years.

In November 2022, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering invested $30 million in TerraPower. In December 2024, HD Hyundai secured an order to manufacture the reactor vessel for TerraPower's 345 MW sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) to be built in Wyoming, U.S.

The two sides have previously advanced cooperation arrangements on multiple occasions. In March last year, Chung and Gates met in the U.S. and signed a commercial agreement covering the expansion of the manufacturing supply chain needed for the commercialization of sodium-cooled fast reactors. In August of the same year, the two sides met again in Seoul to discuss further cooperation plans.

In May this year, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries signed a basic agreement with TerraPower for the supply of sodium-cooled fast reactors and became the preferred bidder for the production and supply of core equipment for major reactor components.

In addition to cooperation in onshore advanced reactor manufacturing, HD Hyundai is also advancing technology development for the use of small modular reactors as a power source for ships.