Every Municipality Its Own Nuclear Reactor?
There is something slightly odd about the idea of a municipality developing its own nuclear power station.
Nuclear energy has traditionally been about national energy policy, massive investments, large utilities, specialised regulation and decisions stretching over decades. Yet an increasing number of Dutch municipalities are now investigating whether a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) could be built within their boundaries. Some are doing considerably more than investigating.
Opmeer is actively trying to develop a project. Den Helder has moved into market consultation. Neder-Betuwe has included working towards an SMR in its energy policy. Duiven is participating in a provincial feasibility study, while several municipalities in Zuid-Holland are involved in a provincial potential study.
I have been here before.
In November 2025 I wrote Prutsen in de polder met een SMR, about Opmeer and its extraordinary combination of a political obsession with nuclear power, resistance to the Regional Energy Strategy, a messed-up policy process and a spectacularly weak feasibility study. Two months later I had to write Prutsen in de polder (vervolg) because my conclusion that the plan had effectively died proved premature. Opmeer found a new nuclear company to talk to and simply continued, albeit still through a rather wacky and at times awkward process.
And in Thorium als Elysium I described the recurring role of technically immature technologies in local energy debates: as ideological anchor, red herring and convenient escape from decisions that have to be taken now. Thorium is not the same as an SMR, but many of the arguments transfer well to the local political debate.
Depending on the municipality, the same technology is now supposed to provide low-carbon electricity, alleviate grid congestion, reduce dependence on wind and solar, provide affordable energy, attract industry, produce hydrogen, strengthen the local economy, improve energy security and increase energy independence.
That is an impressive policy portfolio for one reactor. The better question is therefore not whether SMRs are good or bad, but a more mundane one:
What problem does a municipality actually need an SMR for?
Interest is not the same as wanting one
A municipality participating in an SMR study is not necessarily a municipality that wants an SMR.
At one end of the spectrum are municipalities actively pursuing the option. Opmeer openly expresses its ambition to realise an SMR and in January 2026 decided to work towards an intent agreement with Allseas while continuing talks with Copenhagen Atomics. Neder-Betuwe also has an explicit political ambition: its Energy Vision says the municipality wants to work towards construction of an SMR, although the current feasibility study is explicitly not a decision to build one. Den Helder has selected an area for further investigation, studied technical and spatial feasibility and launched a market consultation in March 2026.
Then there are municipalities where interest means considerably less. Duiven is participating in a feasibility study by the Province of Gelderland, but has not yet taken a position on desirability.
In Zuid-Holland the interest is more exploratory still. In 2025 the province asked all fifty municipalities whether they saw potential for an SMR. None proposed a specific location. Rotterdam, Westland and Voorne aan Zee were positive about further study, and by June 2026 Molenlanden had joined them.
So researching, considering, preferring, facilitating and developing should not be treated as synonyms.
One reactor, many problems
The generic case for SMRs is straightforward enough. Electricity demand will increase through electrification, the power system has to decarbonise, and nuclear power can provide large quantities of stable low-carbon electricity with a relatively small spatial footprint. Things become more interesting once this argument reaches municipal politics.
Neder-Betuwe presents an SMR as a possible structural solution to regional grid congestion, a source of stable and affordable energy, an instrument for economic development and a route towards greater energy self-sufficiency. Employment, innovation, knowledge development and geopolitical resilience are added to the list. Den Helder connects its project to industrial electricity demand, hydrogen, synthetic fuels, maritime activities and broader economic development. Opmeer started somewhere else entirely: resistance to the spatial consequences of wind and solar.
These are not variations on the same business case. They are fundamentally different theories of what an SMR is for.
Opmeer: nuclear power as an escape route from the RES
Opmeer remains the most fascinating case precisely because it is not an obvious location for nuclear-powered industrial decarbonisation. It is a small municipality without a major industrial cluster requiring hundreds of megawatts of continuous electricity and heat. Its interest in nuclear energy instead emerged from the local energy transition and, particularly, resistance to the spatial consequences of wind and solar.
That became unusually explicit in February 2025. When the council allowed the college to continue towards an agreement with an SMR developer, it simultaneously declared the municipal policy frameworks for wind and solar inapplicable until it became clear whether an SMR could be realised. I discussed the bizarre history of that decision extensively in Prutsen in de polder met een SMR, so there is little point in repeating the full autopsy here.
The important point is that the SMR in Opmeer is not merely an additional option in an energy-system strategy. It also functions as an alternative to the conventional local energy transition. Nuclear power promises much higher energy density and therefore a far less visible presence in the landscape than comparable annual generation from wind and solar. Politically, that is attractive.
But it reverses the normal sequence of energy planning. One would normally start with demand, load profiles, flexibility, grid constraints, infrastructure and the available mix of generation, storage and conversion technologies. Opmeer essentially started somewhere else:
We prefer an SMR. Now let us see whether one can be made to fit.
Its first feasibility study illustrated the risk rather neatly. No suitable developer could initially be found for the scale envisaged, but despite the crappy study, they are still talking to two commercial parties. There is nothing inherently wrong with being an early mover. The problem starts when an innovation option becomes an excuse not to implement technologies and infrastructure that exist today.
Den Helder: from nuclear enthusiasm to an actual business case
Den Helder provides a contrast. It has simply reached the point where the easy part stops.
The intended area appears technically and spatially feasible. Den Helder's own follow-up work immediately qualifies that finding: feasibility depends on long-term energy demand, grid infrastructure, legal structuring, financing and societal acceptability. Who builds it? Who finances it? Who buys the electricity? At what price? How is it connected? Who carries development risk? What role should the municipality have?
There is a particularly useful number in the documentation. Existing autonomous regional electricity demand is around 70 MWe. Many SMRs that might realistically be available would be larger than that. Den Helder therefore has a demand problem before it has a reactor.
Consequently, it is investigating long-term Power Purchase Agreements with industrial companies, maritime businesses, datacentres and other large users, alongside additional demand from hydrogen, synthetic fuels and industrial processes.
That is where this stops being a debate about whether nuclear power is attractive and starts becoming an actual project. Instead of asking only whether a reactor physically fits, Den Helder is being forced to ask whether an energy-economic ecosystem can be constructed around it.
And then the governance starts.
This is much closer to the SMR discussion we need. Not because Den Helder necessarily has a convincing project, but because it has reached the stage where slogans no longer suffice. The reactor is only one component. Almost everything around it still has to be organised.
Neder-Betuwe: when the location actually makes sense
Neder-Betuwe offers a third archetype. Its rhetoric is ambitious. An SMR is associated with affordable electricity, grid congestion, economic development, autonomy, employment, innovation and geopolitical resilience. That is again rather a lot to ask from one technology.
But Neder-Betuwe has something Opmeer does not: a location where the physical logic of nuclear generation is immediately visible. Dodewaard, in that municipality, already hosted a nuclear power station. There is a 380/150 kV high-voltage station, substantial energy infrastructure and access to cooling water. Provincial research therefore identified it as one of the most promising locations in Gelderland.
That does not settle the business case or the social and political case. But at least the site logic is not invented afterwards. There is a large difference between saying SMRs are small, therefore surely we can find somewhere to put one and starting with a location whose infrastructure and energy-system characteristics make nuclear generation physically plausible.
The municipality stresses that the current feasibility study was municipality-wide from the outset. No location has been selected and no decision has been taken to build an SMR. It is simultaneously preparing a gemeentelijk bod: its own conditions, principles and interests in relation to a possible development.
I find that more interesting than just another declaration in favour of nuclear energy. It forces the municipality to ask not merely whether it wants an SMR, but what it wants from one, which externalities it will accept and what public value should return to the territory hosting it.
Zuid-Holland: interest without a project
Zuid-Holland is useful because it shows how quickly preliminary interest acquires a life of its own. In 2025 the province approached all fifty municipalities. None proposed an actual site. Rotterdam indicated that the port-industrial complex might offer potential. Rotterdam, Westland and Voorne aan Zee were positive about further investigation. By June 2026, Molenlanden had also joined.
That is interesting because Molenlanden had taken a rather different position only two years earlier when nuclear power was proposed as an alternative to wind in the RES. Its answer then was essentially: no. SMRs could not contribute to the 2030 target because of their development time, still had spatial impacts and were expected to be more expensive than wind and solar.
That does not make participation in a 2026 study inconsistent. It makes the distinction clearer: You can investigate whether a technology has a role in the 2040–2050 energy system without pretending it can replace the wind turbines you have to make a decision about today.
That is a rather sensible position.
An SMR does not, by itself, solve grid congestion
Grid congestion deserves particular attention because it appears repeatedly in municipal arguments.
I already complained about this in my earlier Opmeer piece. Unfortunately, the argument is not unique to Opmeer. Neder-Betuwe still explicitly presents an SMR as potentially providing a “structural solution” to regional grid congestion.
It is easy to see why this appeals politically. Grid congestion constrains industrial electrification, housing development and economic growth. A technology producing large quantities of electricity locally therefore sounds intuitively like a solution.
But grid congestion is not simply a shortage of electricity. Not at all. It is insufficient transport capacity in a particular part of the system at particular times. Adding a large generator can alleviate congestion, leave it unchanged or create another congestion problem, depending on location and available infrastructure.
The proposition is therefore not: local reactor = more local electricity = grid congestion solved.
It is: SMR + large, predictable local demand + appropriate grid architecture = potentially less reliance on scarce public grid capacity.
That is why industrial applications are more interesting. National studies see particular potential after 2035 where SMRs directly supply reliable electricity and heat to industrial users. A reactor supplying an industrial cluster, hydrogen production or another continuous load may reduce transport through parts of the public grid.
That is a system proposition. Putting a reactor somewhere because the capacity map is red or a local council-member has read something on social media is not.
And then there is time
There is another awkward problem. Most problems municipalities associate with SMRs as solutions already exist.
Grid congestion exists today. Companies are waiting for connections today. Housing projects encounter capacity constraints today. RES targets concern 2030. Municipalities are making decisions about wind and solar now.
SMRs belong predominantly to the energy system of the following decade. National studies see their main potential after 2035. Current policy is still concerned with locations, responsibilities, financing, licensing and development of the nuclear ecosystem.
There is nothing wrong with looking that far ahead. Energy infrastructure requires it. But a potential technology for 2035–2050 cannot become an excuse for failing to do the less glamorous work required between now and then. This connects directly to Thorium als Elysium. There I wrote about the attraction of hypothetical future technologies in local politics: it is often much more comfortable to discuss a revolutionary reactor in 2050 than a transformer station, windturbine location or some other difficult spatial choice in 2026.
SMRs deserve to be taken more seriously than thorium. Precisely because they do, they also deserve more serious questions.
The illusion of municipal energy independence
The language of local energy independence deserves similar caution.
Neder-Betuwe, for example, explicitly links an SMR to greater self-sufficiency and geopolitical developments. There is a legitimate energy-security argument for nuclear power at national or European level. But a reactor inside a municipal boundary does not make a municipality an energy island.
Fuel comes through an international nuclear fuel cycle. Regulation and safety oversight are national. Waste enters a national system. Specialised knowledge and maintenance come from a limited international market. Financing will depend heavily on national policy and risk allocation. The plant remains part of the Dutch and European electricity system.
And electricity generated in a municipality does not automatically become cheap electricity for residents of that municipality. Several concepts slide rather easily into one another: local generation is not local ownership; local ownership is not local supply; local supply is not automatically a local electricity price; and none of these is the same as energy independence.
An SMR can still create substantial local value through direct industrial supply, heat, participation, employment, education and infrastructure. But those benefits have to be designed. They do not come free with the reactor.
Start with the problem
None of this is an argument against municipalities investigating SMRs. If nuclear energy is going to play a larger role in the Dutch energy system, municipalities and provinces should understand its spatial, economic and institutional implications long before the first serious permit application arrives.
The present experiments already show the difference between starting with the technology and starting with the problem. Opmeer shows the political attraction of the SMR as an escape from wind, solar and difficult regional agreements. Den Helder shows what happens when nuclear enthusiasm meets an actual business case. Neder-Betuwe shows why existing infrastructure and spatial characteristics matter. Duiven demonstrates that one can investigate an SMR without deciding beforehand that one should be built. Molenlanden demonstrates that exploring a possible role after 2035 does not require pretending that SMRs solve a 2030 RES problem.
The most convincing municipal SMR strategy is therefore unlikely to be the one with the strongest enthusiasm for nuclear power. It will be the one with the clearest demand profile, infrastructure, spatial logic, governance model and problem that an SMR can actually solve. The real test comes when the discussion moves from the generic attractiveness of an SMR to the specifics of an energy system: What demand is being served? Through which connection? Who contracts the output? Who carries volume and price risk? Which infrastructure investments are avoided and which new ones are required? Who owns the project? What is the public role? What happens if deployment takes five or ten years longer than anticipated?
And, perhaps most importantly: Would we have selected this technology if we had started with the problem rather than with the reactor?
Those questions are considerably less exciting than debating nuclear power. They are also the questions that determine whether anything useful gets built. The interesting question is therefore not which Dutch municipality is brave enough to want an SMR. It is, which municipality can explain convincingly why it needs one.