SPECIAL REPORT | LOCAL CONTENT
Local content at what cost?
Political considerations often rest behind the traditional approach to setting percentage targets for local content in nuclear new build. Job creation, benefits for
local industry and long-term socio-economic development are a key concern, but do they also risk generating more costly energy too?
By Michel Delapierre
reactors and increasingly at SMR opportunities too. Its ambition is to build up to four large reactors by 2040. Having received the EU Commission’s approval for up to €222m of state aid in December 2025, it formally established Nuclear Energy Organisation Netherlands (NEO NL) in early 2026. This entity will oversee the tender for at least the first two reactors and is responsible for the construction, operation, and eventual decommissioning of these units. The authorities have concluded that the government will need to finance the construction of the first two reactors, which it will be able to do given the Netherlands’ good debt-to-GDP ratio.
Local content: a political requirement Whilst considerations such as cost and ability to deliver on time are at the top of decision-makers’ list of concerns, local content will be no less of a priority. Hans Koster, project manager at Impuls Zeeland
considers that local content is ultimately a political decision, and the government will decide how much localisation it wants to require. At the NexSMR conference organised by Floriske Deutman in January 2026, a panel debated the importance of local content. Several participants argued that local content was a requirement forced upon developers by politicians wishing to please their electorate and warned that too much focus on local content could create delays. Their argument is that local content should not be pursued at the expense of project delivery. Some criticised politicians’ focus on local content,
arguing that if you force local content, the supplier typically makes less profit, it costs more for the customer, and the cost of energy goes up. One participant criticised the government for its
The 482 MWe Borssele PWR is the Netherlands’ only operable nuclear power plant. Source: EPZ
RECENT GEOPOLITICAL TENSIONS have revived the debate around the need to impose requirements for EU local content in nuclear projects. National and local politicians, who are often the main driving forces behind nuclear projects, want to appear as pushing hard to ensure maximum returns for the local economy, thereby justifying to the taxpayer the billions spent on building nuclear power plants. Yet is sourcing locally or at the EU level always compatible with these politicians’ other key objective of building reactors on time and on budget? The Netherlands is in the process of setting up its nuclear development programme, looking at large
20 | May 2026 |
www.neimagazine.com
short-term vision, with job creation lasting for a maximum of 15 years. They also considered that vendors tend to over-commit on local content and very few actually deliver on that promise. Instead of focusing on rigid targets, they recommended looking at nuclear development regionally, not country by country – in a similar structure to that of the aerospace industry. Under this scenario a particular region could become a hub of excellence in one or more areas of technology and collaborate with the industry for decades. The aim would be to create real economic value for a country by building world-class capability in
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