Innovative reactor developer Newcleo has acquired a site in Chusclan in the Gard department in southern France on which it will construct an R&D innovation and training center supporting the development of its future fuel assembly manufacturing facility in France.

Newcleo said the Fuel process Assembly Storage Training and Enhanced Reality (FASTER) center will play a key role in its strategy to close the nuclear fuel cycle “while safely producing clean, affordable, and sustainable energy, essential for low-carbon economies”. The center will not store or handle any radioactive materials.

FASTER will host: dedicated spaces for testing engineering solutions and maintenance; advanced training facilities, including rooms equipped for virtual and augmented reality, simulators, and a training workshop with real production equipment; and development and qualification workshops designed to test and optimize manufacturing processes using cutting-edge technologies, such as 3D printing, within a high-tech environment dedicated to innovation and precision engineering. The FASTER center will be developed in collaboration with leading Italian design company Pininfarina.

Newcleo said, “By combining technological innovation with an advanced aesthetic approach, the site will provide an optimized workspace that fosters learning and research in an immersive and functional environment – illustrating how nuclear energy can drive sustainability, support net-zero goals, and secure a safe, abundant, and virtually inexhaustible energy source”.

Stefano Buono is the founder and CEO of Newcleo. He said, “The acquisition of this site marks a key milestone in our strategic roadmap. This innovation and training center, designed with Pininfarina’s renowned elegance and functionality in mind, will play a crucial role in preparing and anticipating the operations of our future pilot fuel manufacturing line … as a first structuring step, it will also support the successful deployment of our pilot line at another site in France.”

Newcleo intends to invest directly in a mixed uranium/plutonium oxide (MOX) plant to fuel its small modular lead-cooled fast reactors. In June 2022, the company announced that it had contracted France’s Orano for feasibility studies on the creation of a MOX production plant.

In December last year, Newcleo submitted its Safety Option File to France’s Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection (ASNR) for its fuel assembly testing facility. The ASNR ‘s official opinion on the submitted safety options will contribute to securing the application for authorization to construct such a facility.

According to Paris-headquartered Newcleo’s delivery roadmap, the first non-nuclear pre-cursor prototype version of its reactor is expected to be ready by 2026 in Italy. The first reactor is scheduled to be operational in France by the end of 2031. The final investment decision for the first commercial Newcleo power plant is expected around 2029.

Newcleo said its first-of-a-kind thirty megawatts lead-cooled fast reactor will “serve as an industrial demonstrator, a showcase for Newcleo’s technology, and contribute to the development of the nuclear sector in France”.

Last month, Newcleo announced that it had started the land acquisition process for its demonstration LFR-AS-30 small modular reactor in Indre-et-Loire in the Chinon Vienne et Loire community of municipalities in western France.

Canada-headquartered fusion energy company General Fusion recently demonstrated the first-ever plasma in a reactor driven by steam. This feat was achieved in the latest iteration of its prototype nuclear reactor which they call the Lawson Machine 26 (LM26), a press release said.

If you believe that nuclear fusion is the buzzword of the day, then the story of General Fusion is sure to come as a surprise. General Fusion was founded in 2002 and has been working towards developing commercial nuclear fusion, even as other fusion research companies went bust.

While tokamaks and stellarators are technologies on which most hopes of fusion energy currently rest, General Fusion has been working on magnetized target fusion (MTF). This technology emerged in the 1970s at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, aimed at developing compact fusion reactors.

In 2022, the U.S. National Ignition Facility (NIF) made global headlines after successfully achieving the first energy gain from a nuclear fusion reaction. The key to this achievement was the use of lasers to compress fusion fuel, deuterium, and tritium inside the plasma to replicate reaction conditions similar to those in the center of the Sun.

MTF’s approach is similar, however, instead of lasers, it utilizes steam-driven pistons. The fuel is first magnetized using a small amount of electricity, and then the pistons push a liquid lithium wall against the plasma to compress it, further increasing its temperature. At a particular temperature, a fusion reaction can occur, and then the energy released will heat the liquid lithium.

General Fusion plans to send the hot liquid lithium through a heat exchanger and generate steam to spin a generator. However, before it does that, the plasma must first be compressed. Previous attempts to do so have failed since the pistons could not be controlled precisely enough. Modern computers now allow this precise control, leading to its achievement.

General Fusion’s belief in MTF is based on the fact that the technology is designed to be practical and produce power while not requiring expensive components like superconducting magnets or high-end lasers.

A single MTF power plant could supply power to one hundred and fifty thousand homes while being close to energy demand and minimizing transmission losses. The company mentioned in a press release that the technology could help repurpose industrial steam heat and current power generation sites.

However, the journey to reach first plasma has been a difficult one. Dr. Michel Laberge is the Founder and Chief Science Officer of General Fusion. He said in a press release, “We’ve built twenty-four plasma injectors, created over two hundred thousand plasmas, and generated fusion neutrons from plasma compressions.”

With expertise gained from these experiments, the company designed, assembled, and operated the LM26 in a record time of sixteen months. While this is a significant achievement, the company has a long way to go before it will be able to deliver commercial fusion power.

While aiming for grid power by the next decade, the company must still perfect its liquid lithium wall, which is critical to its operations. Integrating the components to work in sync and produce net energy gain from the setup is an engineering challenge the company is working to solve.

If General Fusion experiments with the LM26 are successful, it is poised to rapidly scale the technology.

The first two lead units of a fifty-five megawatts variant of the Bharat small modular reactor (SMR) will be constructed at a Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) site by 2033, Minister of State Jitendra Singh has told parliamentarians.

Singh provided an update on the status of the DAE Bharat SMR offering in a written answer to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament, providing information on the two hundred megawatts version – the BSMR-200 – and a fifty-five megawatts version.

The BSMR-200 pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR) will use low enriched uranium fuel, Singh said. He added that the “majority of equipment are within the capability of Indian industries”. India has constructed two hundred megawatt PHWRs since the 1980s, and is now constructing a fleet of indigenously designed seven hundred megawatt PHWRs.

Singh said that the BSMR-700 reactor is being designed and developed by Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) to provide “captive” power generation for energy intensive industries such as steel, aluminum and cement; for repurposing retiring thermal power plants; and to provide electricity to remote locations without grid connectivity.

Singh added, “The lead unit will be located at a DAE site. The subsequent units are to be located at the sites of the end-user industry in case of captive power plants and at brownfields sites of retiring thermal power plants. Manufacturing and delivery of equipment and components will be carried out through various indigenous nuclear vendors developed by DAE. Development of critical items such as low alloy steel forgings required for manufacturing the reactor pressure vessel and reactivity control drive mechanisms have been realized by the domestic private vendors. Development works for other critical items such as reactor coolant pumps have been initiated with the private vendors. All major development works will be completed in the pre-project phase. The concept design of BSMR has been completed and is in approval stage. Estimated time for construction of BSMR is 60 to 72 months after receipt of project sanction.”

Singh continued, “The BSMR will contain passive safety features as well as “several engineered safety systems to ensure nuclear safety during accidents.” Spent nuclear fuel will be handled and stored in-situ, in line with India’s broad philosophy to recover “useful radioisotopes” by reprocessing. Remaining waste will be vitrified and stored in engineered facilities in line with internationally accepted practices. Singh said. “However, in the case of SMRs the reprocessing technology is to be re-engineered based on the fuel configuration.”

The 2025 budget includes an allocation of around two and a half billion dollars for the design and deployment of SMRs, Singh noted.

A fifty-five megawatts reactor is also being developed for deployment in remote locations, with the lead twin units to be “set up in a DAE site by 2033”.

Singh mentioned that “Depending on the projected demand, BSMR-200 also can be deployed for such purposes. Both these plants are designed to operate in isolated mode not connected to the grid.”

Nirmala Sitharaman is India’s Minister of Finance. He announced in the 2024 budget the government’s intention to research and develop the Bharat Small Modular Reactor. In this year’s budget which was announced in February, she promised federal funds to develop at least five Indian-designed SMRs to be operational by 2033. There will be amendments to Indian legislation to encourage private sector participation, as part of plans to develop at least one hundred gigawatts of nuclear energy by 2047.

Earlier this year, NPCIL issued a Request for Proposals from ‘visionary Indian industries’ to finance and build a proposed fleet of two hundred and twenty-two megawatts Bharat Small Reactors. Tata Power and the Naveen Jindal Group have previously expressed interest in setting up small modular reactors. In February, Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw told the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament, that nuclear power is under consideration to meet the increasing power needs of the country’s rail sector.

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre

Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited