In February 2016 TVA said it was still developing a site at Oak Ridge for a SMR and would apply for an early site permit (ESP, with no technology identified) for Clinch River in May with a view to building up to 800 MWe of capacity there. TVA has expanded discussions from B&W to include three other light-water SMR vendors. The DOE is supporting this ESP application financially from its SMR Licensing Technical Support Program, and in February 2016 DOE said it was committed to provide $36.3 million on cost-share basis to TVA.
In May 2020 the DOE launched the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) offering funds, initially $160 million, on a cost-share basis for the construction of two advanced reactors that could be operational within seven years. The ARDP will concentrate resources on designs that are "affordable" to build and operate. The programme would also extend to risk reduction for future demonstrations, and include support under the Advanced Reactor Concepts 2020 pathway for innovative and diverse designs with the potential to be commercial in the mid-2030s. Testing and assessing advanced technologies would be carried out at the Idaho National Laboratory's National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC). The NRIC started up in August 2019 as part of the DOE's Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) initiative, which aims to accelerate the development and commercialization of advanced nuclear technologies. In October 2020 grants of $80 million each were made to TerraPower and X-energy to build demonstration plants that can be operational within seven years.
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The DOE plans to build the Microreactor Applications Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) reactor, a 100 kWt microreactor at Idaho. It is designed to perform research and development on various operational features of microreactors to improve their integration with end-user applications and is described in the Research Reactors information page.
In November 2021 the UK government announced that it would contribute 210 million in grant funding to Rolls-Royce SMR to match private investment in this venture. Rolls-Royce Group, BNF Resources UK and Exelon Generation will invest 195 million over about three years in it. Rolls-Royce said the SMR business, which will continue to seek further investment, will now "proceed rapidly with a range of parallel delivery activities, including entry to the UK generic design assessment (GDA) process and identifying sites for the factories which will manufacture the modules that enable onsite assembly of the power plants." The reactor is designed for hydrogen and synthetic fuel manufacturing as well as electricity generation. The Rolls-Royce SMR consortium, involving many of the major UK engineering firms, aims to build 16 reactors, each a pressurized water type of 470 MWe.
The most advanced small modular reactor project is in China, where Chinergy is starting to build the 210 MWe HTR-PM, which consists of twin 250 MWt high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTRs) which build on the experience of several innovative reactors in the 1960s to 1980s.
Each reactor should be an HTR with high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) TRISO fuel and produce a threshold power of 1-10 MWe for at least three years without refuelling. It must weigh less than 40 tonnes and be sized for transportability by truck, ship, and C-17 aircraft. Designs must be "inherently safe", ensuring that a meltdown is "physically impossible" in various complete failure scenarios such as loss of power or cooling, and must use ambient air as their ultimate heat sink, as well as being capable of passive cooling. The reactor must be capable of being installed to the point of "adding heat" within 72 hours and of completing a planned shutdown, cool down, disconnect and removal of transport in under seven days. The DOD announced its preparation of an environmental impact statement for the reactor in March 2020, and awarded $12-14 million contracts to three companies for initial design work. Then BWXT Advanced Technologies and X-energy were selected in March 2021 to develop a final engineering design by March 2022. Westinghouse has dropped out, and one of the two companies may be commissioned in 2022 to build a prototype reactor.
* When B&W launched the mPower design in 2009, it said that Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) would begin the process of evaluating Clinch River at Oak Ridge as a potential lead site for the mPower reactor, and that a memorandum of understanding had been signed by B&W, TVA and a consortium of regional municipal and cooperative utilities to explore the construction of a small fleet of mPower reactors. It was later reported that the other signatories of the agreement were FirstEnergy and Oglethorpe Power3. In February 2013 B&W signed an agreement with TVA to build up to four units at Clinch River, with design certification and construction permit application to be submitted to NRC in 2015. In August 2014 the TVA said it would file an early site permit (ESP) application instead of a construction permit application for one or more small modular reactors at Clinch River, possibly by the end of 2015. In February 2016 TVA said it was still developing a site at Oak Ridge for a SMR and would apply for an early site permit (ESP, with no technology identified) in May with a view to building up to 800 MWe of capacity there.
In October 2015 the Nuclear Power Institute of China (NPIC) signed an agreement with UK-based Lloyd's Register to support the development of a floating nuclear power plant (FNPP) using the ACP100S reactor, a marine version of the ACP100. Following approval as part of the 13th Five-Year Plan for innovative energy technologies, CNNC signed an agreement in July 2016 with China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) to prepare for building its ACP100S demonstration floating nuclear plant.
China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) is developing FNPPs powered by 100 MWt (25 MWe) HHP25 reactors, derived from a submarine reactor by CSIC's No. 719 Research Institute. At the Dalian Maritime Exhibition in October 2018, CSIC said the "offshore nuclear power platform" would be 163 m long, 29 m wide with a displacement of 29,800 t. It is powered by two HHP25 reactors and can supply up to 200 t/d of desalinated water.
This was a conceptual design from DCNS (now Naval Group, state-owned), Areva, EdF and CEA from France. It is designed to be submerged, 60-100 metres deep on the sea bed up to 15 km offshore, and returned to a dry dock for servicing. The reactor, steam generators and turbine-generator would be housed in a submerged 12,000 tonne cylindrical hull about 100 metres long and 12-15 metres diameter. Each hull and power plant would be transportable using a purpose-built vessel. Reactor capacity ranged 50-250 MWe, derived from DCNS's latest naval designs, but with details not announced. In 2011 DCNS said it could start building a prototype Flexblue unit in 2013 in its shipyard at Cherbourg for launch and deployment in 2016, possibly off Flamanville, but the project has been cancelled.
With negative temperature coefficient of reactivity (the fission reaction slows as temperature increases) and passive decay heat removal, the reactors are inherently safe. HTRs therefore are put forward as not requiring any containment building for safety. They are sufficiently small to allow factory fabrication, and will usually be installed below ground level.
In April 2021 X-energy signed an agreement with Energy Northwest and a public utility to set up the Tri Energy Partnership with a view to building an Xe-100 plant near the Columbia nuclear power plant in Washington state. The $2.4 billion project would be half funded by the ARDP and take seven years.
This is a small (20 MWe) concept design of helium-cooled reactor from StarCore Nuclear in Quebec, designed for remote locations (displacing diesel and propane) and with remote control system via satellite. It is expandable to 100 MWe. The units would be installed below grade and in pairs. They are truck-transportable, with reactor vessels 2.5 m diameter and 6 m high. Fuel is TRISO in carbon prismatic matrix. Each reactor has a five-year refuelling schedule. The secondary cooling circuit is nitrogen, to a steam generator driving a turbine. The company offers a build-own-operate-decommission concept with a power purchase agreement for the life of the reactor, mentioning C$0.18 per kWh. The units are designed to deliver both electricity and potable water.
In June 2021 TerraPower announced plans to build a demonstration Natrium unit in Wyoming at a retired coal plant site. It plans to submit a construction permit application in 2023 and an operating licence application in 2026. The plant is expected to cost under $1 billion apart from financing.
In December 2009, AKME-engineering, a 50-50 joint venture, was set up by Rosatom and the En+ Group (a subsidiary of Basic Element Group) as an open joint stock company to develop and build a pilot SVBR unit14. En+ is an associate of JSC EuroSibEnergo and a 53.8% owner of Rusal, which had been in discussion with Rosatom regarding a Far East nuclear power plant and Phase II of the Balakovo nuclear plant. It was to contribute most of the capital, and Rosatom is now looking for another investor. In 2011 the EuroSibEnergo 50% share passed to its subsidiary JSC Irkutskenergo. The main project participants are OKB Gidropress at Podolsk, VNIPIET OAO at St Petersburg, and the RF State Research Centre Institute of Physics & Power Engineering (IPPE or FEI) at Obninsk.
In March 2010, Hyperion (as the company then was) notified the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it planned to submit a design certification application in 2012. The company said then that it has many expressions of interest for ordering units. In September 2010, the company signed an agreement with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions to possibly build a demonstration unit at the Department of Energy site there. Hyperion planned to build a prototype by 2015, possibly with uranium oxide fuel if the nitride were not then available. In March 2012 the US DOE signed an agreement with Hyperion regarding constructing a demonstration unit at its Savannah River site in South Carolina. 2ff7e9595c
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