X-energy and Cavendish Nuclear have been awarded four and a quarter million dollars by the U.K. government to assess how domestic manufacturing could support the construction of an advanced small pebble-bed nuclear reactor. The pair want to build twelve reactors in Hartlepool by the early 2030s to help decarbonize local industry.
The government funding comes through the Future Nuclear Enabling Fund (FNEF) which will assist companies to develop their technologies ahead of the government selecting which projects will help meet national targets for more nuclear generation.
X-energy and Cavendish Nuclear will match the government funding and use the money to review domestic manufacturing and supply chain opportunities. Kier Group, Sheffield Forgemasters, and the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Centre will help X-energy and Cavendish Nuclear carry out the assessment. The collaborators want U.K. firms to receive eighty percent of the value of their Xe-100 reactor projects.
Mick Gornall is the managing director of Cavendish Nuclear. He said, “A fleet of Xe-100s can complement renewables by providing constant or flexible power and produce steam to decarbonize industry and manufacture hydrogen and synthetic transport fuels.”
The Xe-100 is an eighty-megawatt high-temperature gas-cooled reactor design that is optimized to operate as a four-unit plant. This four-unit system will deliver three hundred and twenty megawatts of electricity or two hundred megawatts of heat. The reactor works like a gumball machine with new fuel pebbles the size of billiard balls being fed into the top of the reactor to refresh the older ones being ejected from the bottom of the reactor. Each pebble remains in the core for around three years. They are circulated through the reactor up to six times to achieve full burnup. Helium is cycled through the reactor to extract the heat and feed it to a steam generator.
The reactor design is currently being examined by regulators in the U.S. and Canada. The partners say they plan to engage with U.K. nuclear regulators to evaluate licensing approaches. In 2022, X-energy signed a letter of intent with Dow to install reactors at one of its U.S. Gulf Coast chemical complexes. Last year Dow selected its Seadrift manufacturing site in Texas. The installed reactors will provide power and steam to the chemicals manufacturing site. CO2 emissions should be reduced by an estimated 440,000 tons per year.
Carol Tansley is the X-energy vice-president. Speaking in December about a report exploring how novel nuclear reactors could help decarbonize heavy industry, she said, “This is a huge opportunity for Teesside and the country as a whole. There is a skilled nuclear workforce, with decades of experience of high temperature gas reactor technology, already in place at Hartlepool power station and the plant will be reaching the end of its life just as our project entered development and construction. We can provide high quality local jobs and the broadest range of decarbonization options for the area’s industrial base, and then use that experience to benefit similar regions across the U.K.”
Building on their plans for constructing reactors for Hartlepool, X-energy and Cavendish Nuclear say they want to build as many as 40 Xe-100 reactors in the U.K.
In February of this year, Westinghouse Electric said it was developing plans for four small modular nuclear reactors near Stockton-on-Tees, which is close to Hartlepool. The reactors would also provide low carbon power for the region’s chemicals industry.