Czechia launches plan to build three small modular reactors by early 2030s

Czechia on Sunday unveiled plans to build three small modular reactors (SMRs) at Temelín, Dětmarovice and Tušimice, positioning domestic industry at the heart of Europe’s emerging nuclear supply chain. Industry and Trade Minister Karel Havlíček told reporters after a visit to Škoda JS in Pilsen with Prime Minister Andrej Babiš that the programme is designed as a pan-European initiative rather than a purely domestic energy project. “We already have three locations and are examining others, but this is a substantial start,” Havlíček said. “Our ambition is to be in the supply chain—this is not just a Czech project, but at least a pan-European one.”

The minister emphasised that Czech manufacturers, including Škoda JS, should capture a significant share of future SMR production, particularly within the Rolls-Royce SMR supply chain. Components fabricated in Czech workshops would feed into a broader European effort to expand nuclear capacity while diversifying away from Russian and Chinese suppliers. Prague’s move follows months of technical assessments at the three sites, where grid connections and cooling infrastructure are already in place.

The announcement comes as Lithuania prepares to dismantle RBMK-type reactor cores at the Ignalina plant—the same design used at Chernobyl—marking the world’s first large-scale decommissioning of this reactor type. No country has yet attempted such a project, underscoring the technical complexity that SMR advocates argue can be mitigated by newer, safer designs.

Across the Baltic, Estonia’s Sunly is investing €100 million to build the region’s most powerful hybrid energy park in Latvia, combining wind, solar and battery storage. The project highlights how renewable and nuclear pathways are converging in Europe’s energy transition, even as member states debate the role of nuclear in the Green Deal taxonomy.

In Sweden, meanwhile, the local backlash against SMRs has taken on a distinctly pastoral tone. At Målma gård in Gryts archipelago, where no high-voltage lines currently run, the start-up Kärnfull Next is proposing to site reactors among summer cottages, grazing cows and nesting birds. “All these projects may not come to pass,” admitted founder Christian Sjölander, reflecting the fragile politics of nuclear siting in densely populated landscapes.

The Czech government’s SMR roadmap, due for finalisation by the end of 2026, will detail financing, regulatory timelines and domestic content requirements. Industry sources say the first unit could be operational by the early 2030s, provided supply-chain bottlenecks in high-temperature piping and control systems are resolved. For a country that has relied on coal for half its electricity, the shift to SMRs represents both an industrial opportunity and a strategic gamble on Europe’s decarbonisation trajectory.