The government's U-turn on nuclear power in Poland. The new minister has been given an urgent task by the prime minister.

• Prime Minister Donald Tusk, speaking before the reconstituted government on Friday, said he hopes the government will make a decisive decision regarding small modular nuclear reactors this summer. He believes such reactors represent a "real opportunity."
• This is a complete change in the government's narrative, because until now the Ministry of Industry, which has been working on nuclear energy, maintained that the SMR technology was still too immature and required further analysis.
• Now there is no longer a Ministry of Industry, and the new Minister of Energy, Miłosz Motyka, was ordered by Prime Minister Tusk to tackle the issue of a small nuclear power plant immediately.

Until now, work on the future of nuclear power in Poland has been led by the Ministry of Industry. Its main tasks included updating the Polish Nuclear Power Program (PPEJ), which outlines the directions for the development of nuclear power in Poland.

The Ministry of Industry didn't believe in a small nuclear power plant. "Immature technology."

The previous version of the document, published in 2020, assumed the construction of two large-scale nuclear power plants with a total capacity of 6-9 GW. The updated PNPP changes little here. Instead, the document was supposed to include new nuclear technologies currently entering the market, including SMRs (Small Modular Reactors).

Orlen and Synthos have invested in small-scale nuclear power in Poland. Their nuclear subsidiary, OSGE, plans to build the first such reactor at the beginning of the next decade.

The introduction of new technologies into official government documents gave the SMR industry hope that the environment for this type of investment would change. However, within the Ministry of Industry, which was working on updating the PNPP, attitudes towards SMRs were lukewarm, to say the least.

Currently, SMR technology is still at a too early stage of development, which is why it has not been included in the update of the Polish Nuclear Energy Program - this is how Paweł Gajda, director of the Nuclear Energy Department, said about the lack of a small nuclear power plant in the updated version of the Polish Nuclear Energy Program.

In return, the ministry began work on a separate document, the so-called SMR roadmap, which was to include recommendations for the development of the technology in Poland. This was met with strong criticism from the industry, which wants to build small reactors now, not just create recommendations.

The Ministry of Energy has been tasked with accelerating the development of a small nuclear power plant in Poland.

Apparently, after the reconstruction, the government's attitude towards SMRs also changed radically.

- Let's face this quickly and decide on the procedure when it comes to these state-of-the-art modular nuclear reactors - said Prime Minister Donald Tusk during Friday's speech before the meeting of the reconstructed government.

I hope that by the end of the summer you will present a precise action plan on this issue, said Donald Tusk to the Minister of Energy.

This is good news for OSGE. The company is currently implementing the most advanced SMR design and aims to build its first BWRX-300 reactor early in the next decade. Other companies have also announced similar plans.

The Prime Minister also recalled that Poland is building a nuclear power plant, a so-called large one. "We are finalizing work on the location of a possible second investment, for a second large nuclear power plant. Here, too, we will need a quick, decisive decision," Tusk indicated.

He noted that the first large wind turbines are currently being installed in the Baltic Sea. "We'll probably go there and see how it works," he added.