Chung Ki-sun, Chairman of HD Hyundai (267250.KS), is expected to meet Bill Gates, chairman of the Gates Foundation, during Gates' visit to Korea on the 14th to discuss cooperation on small modular reactors (SMRs). The meeting comes seven months after the two held talks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.
During the visit, Gates is expected to meet in succession with National Assembly Speaker Cho Jung-sik, Prime Minister Han Seong-sook and executives of SK (034730.KS) and HD Hyundai, business sources said on the 12th. The meeting with the prime minister was proposed by Gates' side, according to the sources.
SK and HD Hyundai are major shareholders in TerraPower, a next-generation nuclear power company Gates founded in 2008. HD Hyundai and TerraPower, in particular, have been solidifying their cooperation in the SMR field. The relationship began when HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (009540.KS) invested $30 million in TerraPower.
HD Hyundai has since won a contract to build the reactor vessel for a 345-megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) that TerraPower is constructing in the U.S. state of Wyoming, and the vessel is now in production. Chung and Gates met in the U.S. in March last year and signed a memorandum of understanding to expand the manufacturing supply chain for commercializing sodium-cooled reactors, and they discussed further cooperation in Seoul in August of the same year.
In May this year, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (329180.KS) signed a basic supply agreement with TerraPower for sodium-cooled reactors and was selected as the preferred bidder to manufacture and supply key components of the reactor's main equipment. HD Hyundai is also pursuing the development of technology to use SMRs as a power source for ships.
