Advanced Reactors

Seattle-based Ultra Safe Nuclear (USNC), developer of a high-temperature, gas-cooled microreactor design that has drawn interest from potential customers and research and development funding from the Department of Energy, announced yesterday that it has filed a petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to facilitate its sale to Standard Nuclear Inc. The filing, made in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., includes USNC and its subsidiaries, Ultra Safe Nuclear-Technologies, USNC-Power, and Global First Power.

Tech giant Amazon announced Wednesday new partnerships with Dominion Energy and X-energy to develop and deploy 5 gigawatts of nuclear energy to power needs across the country over the next 15 years.

Washington, D.C. — Craig Piercy, CEO of the American Nuclear Society (ANS), issued the following statement:

"The American Nuclear Society applauds the announced partnerships between Google and Kairos Power and by Amazon and X-energy. Together, these deals will add at least 820 megawatts of zero carbon electricity to the U.S. energy supply. This is a major step toward securing the commercial deployment of advanced nuclear technologies that will make the world a cleaner and more prosperous place."

The Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Advanced Nuclear report that was released in March 2023 by the Department of Energy called for five to 10 signed reactor contracts for at least one reactor design by 2025. Now, 18 months have passed, and despite the word “resurgence” in media reports on the U.S. nuclear power industry, 2025 is fast approaching with no contracts signed.

Kairos Power broke ground yesterday on a Salt Production Facility at the company’s newly dedicated Manufacturing Development Campus during an event at a sprawling site in Mesa del Sol, N.M., just south of Albuquerque. The new facility will produce the FLiBe (a mixture of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride salts) needed to cool the advanced reactors Kairos Power plans to build, starting with its Hermes nonpower demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and could be operational and producing salt in 2026, according to an October 3 Department of Energy news release.

The Department of Defense announced September 24 that it has broken ground on the site at Idaho National Laboratory’s Critical Infrastructure Test Range Complex (CITRC) where Project Pele, a transportable 1–5 MWe microreactor, will be tested. The DOD’s Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) is in charge, on a mission to prove that a mobile microreactor can help meet the DOD’s increasing demand for resilient carbon-free energy for mission-critical operations in remote and austere environments.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has notified TerraPower that the company has delivered enough information on volcanic risk activity around its proposed small modular reactor project in Kemmemer, Wyo., to satisfy the federal review process.

Westinghouse Electric Company has completed the front-end engineering and experiment design (FEEED) for a prototype microreactor at Idaho National Laboratory, the Department of Energy recently announced. The one-fifth scale version of eVinci, Westinghouse’s 5-MWe sodium-cooled heat pipe design, is one of three reactors that could be tested at the National Reactor Innovation Center’s (NRIC) DOME test bed “as early as 2026,” the DOE said.

Microreactor developer Aalo Atomics and municipal electric utility Idaho Falls Power have developed a memorandum of understanding that could lead to the siting of seven sodium-cooled microreactors and a power purchase agreement for Idaho Falls.

Westinghouse Electric Company announced today that it has signed a teaming agreement with Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company to pursue opportunities in Sweden and Finland for nuclear power plants based on Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactor technology.

The Texas A&M University System (TAMUS) is seeking proposals from qualified candidates to construct a commercial nuclear reactor on the university’s RELLIS campus in Bryan, Texas.

Interested parties are welcome to attend a virtual preproposal conference today, September 6, at 11:00 a.m. (EDT). Information about this conference, including a link to participate, can be obtained via email to soprocurement@tamus.edu.

Kairos Power accomplished another step forward for its Hermes 2 reactor plans as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week published its final environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact.

China’s State Council has approved the construction of four new nuclear reactors based on Westinghouse's AP1000 technology at two Chinese power plants. China’s State Power Investment Corporation plans to build two of the reactors at its Bailong nuclear power project in Guangxi Province, where preparatory groundwork construction can now begin at the site. The other two units were approved for the Lufeng nuclear power plant, located in Guangdong Province and owned by China General Nuclear Power Corporation, where sitework has already begun.

U.S. and African officials announced from a nuclear energy summit last week a new partnership between Nuclear Power Ghana and Regnum Technology Group, an American small modular reactor developer using NuScale Power’s design.

The United Kingdom’s Department of Energy Security and Net Zero has signed off on Westinghouse’s AP300 small modular reactor earlier this month.

The IAEA’s Milestones in the Development of a National Infrastructure for Nuclear Power was last revised back in 2015. Now, about nine years later and amid a resurgence of interest in nuclear power, the latest guidance on the IAEA’s Milestones Approach offers updated advice to policymakers in nations looking to introduce a nuclear power program or expand an existing fleet, encouraging them to evaluate infrastructure readiness before seeking bids from reactor vendors. For the first time, the guide includes an “annex” specific to small modular reactor deployments.

Wald

“We’re going to have to do things differently if we hope to trim the output of climate-changing emissions,” writes Matthew L. Wald in an essay recently published by the Breakthrough Institute. Wald is an independent energy analyst, writer, and Nuclear News contributor who formerly worked for the Nuclear Energy Institute and the New York Times. In the essay, he says that despite optimism surrounding progress in clean energy, consumption of fossil fuels is growing, and greenhouse gas emissions are increasing.

Wald suggests that this situation is unlikely to turn around until small modular reactors and other advanced nuclear technologies are demonstrated to be commercially viable.

Race to zero emissions? Wald notes that “global consumption of fossil fuels grew 1.5 percent last year.” Furthermore, “the fossil mix is getting worse; oil was up even faster than total fossil consumption, and demand passed 100 million barrels a day for the first time.

The Tennessee Valley Authority this week discussed the potential for new nuclear technology at its sites during its second-quarter earnings call.

TVA and GE Hitachi signed an agreement in 2022 to develop and deploy a BWRX-300 small modular reactor at the Clinch River site near Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Earlier today, on a site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., that was formerly home to the K-33 Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Kairos Power marked the start of construction on its low-power demonstration reactor. Named Hermes, the 35-MWt test reactor claims status as the first Gen IV reactor to be approved for construction by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the first non–light water reactor to be permitted in the United States in more than 50 years.

Eielson Air Force Base in central Alaska has been the preferred location to demonstrate the benefits of microreactors to the U.S. Air Force—and by extension the Defense Department—since 2018. Now, a protracted solicitation process is nearing an end, and the Air Force and the Defense Logistics Agency Energy (DLA Energy) expect to announce a final procurement decision by the end of the summer—or about one year after Oklo Inc. announced that it had been tentatively selected to supply a microreactor under a 30-year power purchase agreement.