Orlen and Włocławek sign pact for six BWRX-300 SMRs

Orlen Synthos Green Energy and the City of Włocławek signed a cooperation agreement on Wednesday that gives the BWRX-300 plan a more tangible local footing, even though it still stops short of a final investment decision. The pact covers public communication, educational work and information-sharing on the investment process, and it also calls for a local information center where residents can follow the project and ask questions about nuclear technology and siting.

That matters because Włocławek is not being introduced as a fresh guess on a map. OSGE put the city on its 2023 shortlist of six locations for further geological surveys, alongside Ostrołęka, Stawy Monowskie, Dąbrowa Górnicza, Nowa Huta and the Tarnobrzeg Special Economic Zone. In August 2025, ORLEN said Włocławek would be the first location for Poland’s first SMR buildout, and the new city agreement now turns that political line into a more specific local workstream.

The project is still moving through the slow part of the nuclear pipeline. The Polish Ministry of Climate and Environment issued six decisions-in-principle for the proposed BWRX-300 plants in December 2023, and in February 2025 the General Director for Environmental Protection defined the scope of the environmental reports for Włocławek and Ostrołęka. Those are the kinds of steps that decide whether an SMR remains a presentation or becomes a site with a permit path.

The technology choice is the GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300, the same design OSGE is pursuing for the Polish rollout. GE Vernova Hitachi says the first BWRX-300 unit is expected by the end of 2029, with commercial operation by the end of 2030, while Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington project is the first commercial build of the design now under construction. That gives Poland a benchmark, and a reminder that the schedule is measured in years, not press releases.

Włocławek also makes sense as an industrial site rather than a blank patch on a planning map. ANWIL, an ORLEN Group company, says it is one of Poland’s largest nitrogen-fertilizer producers and the country’s only producer of suspension PVC. An OSGE presentation says the Włocławek site covers about 135 hectares and sits near the ANWIL chemical plant, with potential uses in industrial steam and district heating.

The cooperation pact sits on top of a broader reset in the project’s structure. In 2025, ORLEN and Synthos said they had moved OSGE to a 50/50 partnership, secured full access to the BWRX-300 Standard Design and set up an ORLEN-controlled special-purpose vehicle to handle construction. That is the difference between another SMR headline and a project that is starting to look like a real siting file in Włocławek.