Part 1 of 2 Parts
The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) has just announced that it has selected eleven domestic advanced nuclear projects in six states for funding with shares of an eighteen-million-dollar grant program. There will be cost sharing with other sources of funding for a total of twenty-five million dollars. Teams from the nuclear industry will be collaborating with federal agencies, public and private laboratories, universities and colleges and other domestic agencies to advance U.S. commercial nuclear capabilities.
Rick Perry is the U.S. Secretary of Energy. He said, “Nuclear energy plays an increasingly important role in reaching our country’s clean energy and economic goals. These awards are prime examples of the private-public partnerships needed to help successfully develop and deploy innovative domestic nuclear technologies.”
These awards are part of the Office of Nuclear Energy’s U.S. Industry Opportunities for Advanced Nuclear Technology Development program. This is the third phase of this particular program. Phase One was announced on April 27 of this year and Phase Two was announced on July 10. Altogether, these three phases are distributing ninety-eight million dollars to various nuclear projects. There will be quarterly grant application reviews and selection of additional projects over the next four years.
The first funding pathway of Phase Three is the First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) Nuclear Demonstration Readiness Project. This project is dedicated to major advanced reactor design development projects or complex advancements for existing plants where there are substantial technical and licensing risks. These projects have to be able to be deployed by the mid-to-late 2020s.
Under this Readiness Project, the Integral and Separate Effects Test Program for the Investigation and Validation of Passive Safety System Performance of SMRs - Phase 1 Only - will receive funds. SMR, LLC in Camden, NJ will be working on a configurable set of testing platforms that will be used to demonstrate the safety of small modular reactors (SMRs), accelerate SMR designs to market and assist in licensing these designs with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissions and international regulators.
The Advanced Reactor Development Projects funding pathway was created to support a board variety of proposed concepts and ideas that are will enhance the capabilities and commercial potential of advanced reactor designs and technologies. Four projects were selected for funding from this Development Projects program.
The Development of Cable Aging Acceptance Criteria for Nuclear Facilities was proposed by Analysis and Measurement Services Corporation of Knoxville, TN. The purpose of this project is to create acceptance criteria for mechanical, electrical, thermal, and chemical condition monitoring tests to study age-related degradation of electrical cables in nuclear installations.
The Modeling and Analysis of Exelon Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs) for Eigenvalue & Thermal Limits Predictability proposal came from Exelon Generation in Kennett Square, PA. This project is intended to lead to a better understanding of BWR core behavior. The reactor modeling tool Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) will be used for this project. It is hoped that this project will contribute to better performance predictions for BWRs. These predictions will include reactivity and thermal margins which have a positive economic impact with respect to cycle energy production and fuel costs.
Please read Part 2