Lightbridge Corporation has decided to prioritize the development of fuel for future small modular reactors rather than producing fuel for current large power reactors. The company is also considering a zirconium-plutonium version of its fuel. Seth Grae is the President and CEO of Lightbridge. He made these comments in a public statement before a webcast.
Lightbridge has taken steps to reduce many of the risks associated with its business, said Grae. These include the recently announced settlement agreement with Framatome terminating their Enfission joint venture. Lightbridge is now free to pursue “various promising opportunities.”
In a webcast, Grae commented that the company had initially focused on fuel for large-pressurized water reactors (PWEs). It now expects that Chinese and Russian companies will account for most of the new worldwide growth in large reactors between the present and 2050.
Grae said, “We believe that what we are seeing is an overall shift from government and private sector, from large pressurized water reactors to SMRs and advanced technologies. We understand that the Biden Administration will prioritize advanced nuclear technologies - including advanced fuels and SMRs - as part of its nuclear energy policy.”
“Finally, we have taken the critical step of prioritizing our fuel development program towards powering small modular reactors of the future. SMRs are expected to have much lower capital costs per module than larger reactor designs, making their deployment easier to finance and support by private and government sectors. In addition, we expect SMR plants with Lightbridge Fuel to have the ability to load follow renewables, helping to expand markets for renewables and SMRs together as countries seek to decarbonize energy generation. We believe that Lightbridge Fuel’s most significant economic benefit to SMRs will be to provide a 30% power uprate that will allow SMRs greater flexibility in power levels.”
“We want to position Lightbridge as an essential company for the world to meet its climate goals. While existing large reactors can present an additional market opportunity for Lightbridge Fuel, we do not expect significant future growth in the number of these large reactors, so they will not move the needle on climate change. Lightbridge is going where the industry is heading, along with the significant government funding opportunities we expect to go toward SMRs in the coming years, and we remain focused on our pursuit of the full-scale commercialization of Lightbridge Fuel as quickly as possible."
The Enfission joint venture was launched in January of 2018 to develop, license and sell nuclear fuel assemblies based on Lightbridge’s innovative metallic nuclear fuel technology, which focuses on metallic fuel rods that offer economic and safety benefits over traditional nuclear reactor fuel. The joint venture was to produce Lightbridge fuel assemblies initially for the operators of U.S. commercial nuclear power reactors. This would be followed by production of Lightbridge fuel assemblies for other types of reactors and nuclear markets around the world. Grae said that Lightbridge was not going to abandon existing light water reactors in its strategy. He added that the R&D work the company is doing remains applicable to existing reactors as well as shorter-length fuel for SMRs.
Lightbridge believes that the Biden administration will attempt to use a recent agreement between the presidents of the U.S. and Russia to extend the New Start arms limitation treaty to begin negotiations on further arms reductions, and to eliminate plutonium from dismantled weapons.
Grae said, “Recently, the presidents of the U.S. and Russia agreed to extend the New START treaty for an additional five years. The New START treaty will prevent an increase in the number of certain types of nuclear weapons in the US and Russian arsenals. We understand that the Biden Administration may seek to use this opportunity to enter into negotiations with Russia, and perhaps China, to reduce the number of weapons and eliminate plutonium from the weapons that would be dismantled, making it harder to replace the weapons in the future. While there would still be careful analysis ahead of us, we believe that a zirconium-plutonium version of Lightbridge Fuel could be an ideal solution in disposing of the plutonium from weapons, using it to generate energy.”
He added that it could also be used for disposing or reactor-grade plutonium arising from reprocessing of civil nuclear fuel. He went on to say that “Our patent portfolio includes zirconium-plutonium fuel. We will explore these opportunities over the coming months for potential government interest and funding support.”