A Danish company is eyeing the Philippines for a strategic deployment of its small modular reactor (SMR) technology in nuclear power development once it passes licensing phase and approvals by government authorities.

According to Denmark Ambassador to the Philippines Franz-Michael Mellbin, nuclear power is one of the areas of investments that Danish firms have been most interested in, aside from those on offshore and onshore wind; as well as targeted installations in the solar development space.

“The three things that we are looking at are both onshore and offshore wind and solar and small modular reactors in nuclear. So, these are the three that we are looking at right now,” he stressed.

For the planned rollout of SMR technology, he explained that the nuclear power application that could be offered by Danish firm Seaborg Technology is sea-based SMR solution, which will be different from the land-based technology being widely experimented on by other countries.

He indicated that beyond the usual concerns of permitting, licensing as well as waste management, the advantage of this SMR technology is that “the time to market is much shorter than it is for land-based solutions.”
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The envoy shared that the Danish company has an existing collaboration with South Korean regulators and authorities to identify the requirements on targeted export of the floating nuclear power plant that is anchored on compact molten salt reactor (CMSR) technology, once it secures the go-signal for deployment to targeted markets around the world.

Apart from nuclear and heightened interest on wind and solar ventures, Mellbin emphasized that the other investment areas being explored by Danish companies are those on waste-to-energy facilities; as well as eventual plunge into hydrogen and ammonia solutions.

“There is also developing interest in waste-to-energy and I believe that there’s big potential here…and also other innovations like hydrogen and ammonia. I think that we will see large-scale hydrogen and ammonia production that will come, because Denmark is highly interested to become a world leading provider of these,” he noted.

The ambassador, nevertheless, stated that for these capital flow from Danish firms to be concretized, the Philippine government will need to address pressing issues on red tape constantly sounded off by investors.

“I’ve made this promise to the President - if the President can cut the red tape, we can cut the red ribbons. So we push for improving the business environment - for investors, that will be very helpful,” he asserted.