Australian company Silex Systems Ltd. has been developing full-scale laser system modules for deployment in Global Lasers Enrichment (GLE) commercial demonstration facility in the U.S. Testing has been completed on the second module.
     Silex mentioned that the second module was constructed and tested at its laser technology development center in Lucan Heights, near Sydney in less than twelve months. This is in line with the accelerated schedule for the commercial-scale pilot demonstration project.
     The laser system module is currently being prepared for shipments to GLE’s facility in Wilmington, North Carolina. It is expected to be installed and operational by the end of 2023, subject to transportation scheduling.
     Michael Goldsworthy is the Managing Director and CEO of Silex. He said, “This is another key milestone for the SILEX uranium enrichment technology which demonstrates our ability to efficiently build full-scale SILEX laser system modules, and to incorporate improvements which enable increased reliability under commercial-scale conditions for extended periods. We are also encouraged with the accelerated efforts in GLE’s Test Loop facility through which the balance of pilot systems, including the separator and gas handling equipment, are progressing towards completion of construction. We are hopeful that commissioning of the full pilot facility could commence in Q1 CY2024.”
     The first full-scale laser system module developed by Silex completed eight months of testing in August 2022. Following the testing, it was packaged for shipment to GLE’s Test Loop Facility at Wilmington. It was expected to be installed before the end of 2022.
     GLE is the exclusive worldwide licensee of the SILEX laser technology for uranium enrichment.
      GLE is a joint venture between Silex (fifty one percent) and Cameco (forty nine percent). Last February, the two companies agreed to a plan and a budget for CY2023 that accelerates activities in the commercial-scale pilot demonstration project for the SILEX uranium enrichment technology as early as mid-2024. At that time, Silex said, “If the technology demonstration project can be successfully completed on an accelerated timeline, this preserves the option to commence commercial operations at the Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility (PLEF) up to three years earlier than originally planned, subject to the availability of government and industry support, as well as geopolitical and market factors.”
     In a recent statement, Silex said, “Assuming successful achievement of TRL-6 and a positive feasibility study, GLE could potentially deploy the PLEF for the production of natural grade uranium (in the form of UF6) via enrichment of Department of Energy-owned tails inventories under a landmark agreement signed between GLE and the DOE in 2016.”
     The PLEF project has the potential to produce up to five million pounds of uranium oxide annually for about thirty years. GLE will produce natural grade UF6 via tails processing. They are also considering further development of PLEF to use the technology to produce low-enriched uranium and so-called LEU+ from natural UF6 to supply fuel for existing reactors. They may also produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for next generation advanced small modular reactors (SMRs). HALEU is critical to the fueling of many SMR designs.

     Gentilly 2 was Québec’s only operating nuclear power plant in 2012. It had an installed capacity of six hundred and seventy-five megawatts of electricity. In September of 2012, the provincial government announced that a planned refurbishment of the plant would no longer proceed. The Candu reactor is located on the south shore of the Fleuve Saint Lurent (Saint Lawrence River) in the town of Becancour. Gentilly 2 was closed at the end of 2012 after operating for twenty-nine years.
     Hydro-Québec is a corporation owned by the Québec government. It recently responded to reports in the Canadian press that President and CEO Michael Sabia had initiated a feasibility study regarding the possibility of recommissioning the plant.
     In a press release, Hydro-Québec said, “Remember that the demand for clean electricity will increase significantly over the next few years, in order to decarbonize the Quebec economy, which represents an immense challenge. An assessment of the current state of the plant is underway, in order to assess our options and inform our reflections on Québec’s future energy supply. We are evaluating different possible options to increase the production of clean electricity. It would be irresponsible at this time to exclude certain energy sectors as the province faces the challenges of increasing electricity demand.”
     Gentilly 2 was decommissioned immediately after it shut down for the last time in December of 2012. All the nuclear fuel was removed by September 2013. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) issued a decommissioning license for the plant in July of 2016. All of its spent nuclear fuel had been transferred to dry storage on site by December of 2020. The decommissioning plan called for transitioning the plant to a forty-year monitored storage phase before beginning final dismantling in 2057. Late last year, Hydro-Québec stated that it was exploring the possibility of dismantling some of the buildings on the site earlier than had been planned.
     More than ninety nine percent of Hydro-Québec’s electricity output is generated from renewable sources. Most of that output comes from Hydro-Québec’s sixty-three hydropower generating stations and twenty eight reservoirs. However, according to the company’s Strategic Plan 2022-2026, more than one hundred terawatt hours of additional clear electricity will be necessary if the province is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025. According to that plan, the company intends to increase its generating capacity by five thousand megawatts by upgrading its current hydropower plants and adding wind power capacity.
      Nationally, Canada generates more than sixteen percent of its electricity from eighteen Candu nuclear power reactors at the Bruce, Darlington and Pickering sites in Ontario and a single reactor at Point Lepreau in New Bruswick. Alberta, New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan are pursuing a strategic plant to develop and deploy small modular reactors (SMRs). In July of this year, the government of Ontario announced the start of pre-development work to construct up to forty-eight hundred megawatts of new large scale capacity at Bruce Power’s existing site.
    Earlier this week, the Canadian government launched its vision for transforming Canada’s electricity sector. Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson described the project as “truly transformational and nation-building.” Powering Canada Forward will inform how the Canadian federal government plans to work with partners and stakeholders as it develops Canada’s first Clean Energy Strategy, which will be released next year.

     The Australian government is no longer considering siting a national low and intermediate-level radioactive waste facility in Napandee near Kimba in South Australia. A federal court handed down a decision to dismiss a 2021 declaration naming Napandee as the proposed site for the facility. The federal government said that it will not appeal the decision.
     In 2015, the government called for site nominations. Napandee was voluntarily nominated in 2017 by its landowner as a possible site to host the facility. In September of 2020, an Australian Senate committee recommended that the parliament pass legislation to make Napandee the preferred site for the facility.
     In November of 2021, after years of consultation, then Minister of Resources Keith Pitt declared Napandee as the location of the facility. As called for under the relevant legislation, the declaration had the effect of the federal government purchasing about two hundred hectares of land for the purpose of hosting the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility (NRWMF).
     However, the area’s traditional landowners, the Barngarla people argued that they were not properly consulted by the former coalition government about the decision to select the site. They sought judicial review of the 2021 declaration. On July 18th, Federal Court Justice Natalie Charlesworth ruled in their favor. She set aside the declaration because the court found “apprehended bias” present in the decision of the then minister.
     Madeleine King is the current Minister for Resources. In addressing parliament, she said, “I do not intend to appeal the judge’s finding of apprehended bias. I have reached an agreement with the Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation on costs, and I hope that we will also come to an agreed approach to orders relating to the date of application of the judge’s decision in coming days, for the court’s consideration, in due course. We have said all along that a national radioactive waste facility requires broad community support. Broad community support which includes the whole community, including the traditional owners of the land. This is not the case at Kimba.”
     King said that the federal government does not intend to pursue Napandee as a potential site for the facility. They will also not pursue Lyndhurst and Wallerberdina either which were previously shortlisted sites. She noted that “My department has begun work on alternative proposals for the storage and disposal of the Commonwealth’s civilian low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste.”
     Australia does not produce any nuclear power. However, it has a long experience of operating research reactors and producing radioisotopes for use in medicine, research and industry.
     According to King, the most recent national inventory conducted in 2021 found that Australia has about seventeen thousand cubic yards of low-level radioactive waste and five thousand seven hundred cubic yards of intermediate-level radioactive waste. This radioactive waste is currently stored at over a hundred sites around the country, including science facilities, hospitals and universities.
     The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) said, “We want to reassure the Australian community that ANSTO will take the necessary steps to ensure we have sufficient storage capacity for our radioactive waste until a purpose-built facility is established. This means we can and will continue to operate, including the production and supply of nuclear medicines at our Lucas Heights campus. We will maintain our support for the Australian Radioactive Waste Agency (ARWA) in its work to progress establishment of a national waste facility.”
     The ARWA was set up in July of 2020 to manage all of Australia’s radioactive waste. It is leading the process to deliver the NRWMF. ARWA will also lead a separate process to site a facility to permanently dispose of the country’s intermediate-level radioactive waste. This will probably be a deep geological disposal facility in a different location.

     General Fusion (GF) is a private fusion developer based in Canada. GF has just announced plans for a new Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) machine. The MTF is designed to achieve fusion conditions of over one hundred million degrees Celsius by 2025. GF hopes to reach breakeven by 2026.
     The MTF is also known as the Lawson Machine 26 (LM26). The demonstration is designed to be cost-efficient and produce results quickly using General Fusion’s unique approach to fusion. The LM26 will be constructed at GF’s Richmond, British Columbia headquarters. The LM26 will validate GF’s ability to symmetrically compress magnetized plasmas in a repeatable manner and achieve fusion conditions at scale.
     The LM26 will integrate General Fusion’s existing operational plasma injector (PI3) with a new lithium liner compression system. The PI3 was preceded by twenty four predecessor prototypes and more than two hundred thousand plasma experiments. GF said that the PI3 is one of the world’s biggest and most powerful operational plasma injectors. The PI3 has already demonstrated plasma temperatures of five million degrees and ten millisecond self-sustaining energy confinement times. Both of these are critical steppingstones to achieving the LM26’s target of fusion conditions in 2025. The LM26’s plasmas will be about fifty percent of the scale of a commercial fusion reactor.
     Over the next two years, GF will collaborate with the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) to validate the data acquired from the LN26 and incorporate it into the design of GF’s commercial-scale demonstration in the U.K.
     GF said that “This machine represents a significant new pillar to accelerate and de-risk General Fusion’s Demonstration Program, designed to leverage the company’s recent technological advancements and provide electricity to the grid with commercial fusion energy by the early to mid-2030s.”
     Greg Twinney is the CEO of General Fusion. “Our updated three-year Fusion Demonstration Program puts us on the best path forward to commercialize our technology by the 2030s. We’re harnessing our team’s existing strengths right here in Canada and delivering high-value, industry-leading technical milestones in the near term.”
     GF’s MTF approach involves injecting hydrogen plasma into a liquid metal sphere. The plasma is then compressed and heated so that fusion takes place. The heat from the fusion of the hydrogen atoms is transferred into the liquid metal. This allows fusion conditions to be created in short pulses rather than creating a sustained reaction. This approach “avoids the pitfalls of other approaches that require expensive superconducting magnets or high-powered lasers,” according to GF.
     GF intends to construct its Fusion Demonstration Plant (FDP) at the UKAEA’s Culham Campus near Oxford, England. The plant will be utilized to prove the viability of the MTF technology. It will be a seventy percent scaled version of the commercial pilot plant. But, the plant will not be used to produce power. The FDP will cycle one plasma pulse per day. It will utilize deuterium fuel. The commercial pilot plant will use deuterium-tritium fuel. It will cycle up to one plasma pulse per second. The FDP is expected to be commissioned in 2026 and to go into operation by early 2027.
     GF has completed the first close of its Series F funding for a combined total of twenty-five million dollars. The round was anchored by existing investors including BDC Capital and GIC. It also includes new grant funding from the Government of British Columbia. This builds upon the Canadian government’s ongoing support through the Strategic Innovation Fund.

      Tractebel and First Light Fusion have just signed a framework agreement for the development of the Machine 4 project which is designed to demonstrate net energy gain through nuclear fusion.
      First Light is based at the U.K. Atomic Energy Agency’s (UKAEA) Culham campus, near Oxford. It was founded in 2011. First Light is working on projectile fusion which is a branch of inertial confinement fusion. Last December the National Ignition Facility in the USA became the first fusion research facility to demonstrate energy gain from fusion. It used a laser array to trigger fusion.
     First Light’s inertial confinement approach will attempt to create the extreme temperatures and pressures required for fusion by compressing a target using a hyper velocity projectile. The First Light plant design avoids the three biggest engineering challenges of fusion. These are preventing neutron flux damage, producing tritium and managing extreme heat flux.
     First Light utilizes a “liquid lithium wall” approach inside the reactor vessel where the fusion reaction will take place. The company says that this technique gives it an inherent advantage in tritium production. The fusion reaction is surrounded by liquid lithium which allows tritium self-sufficiency to be easily reached. This makes it possible to design the system for excel tritium production.
     The two companies said that the Machine 4 demonstrator “will house the largest pulsed power driver in the world, 75 meters in diameter”. Tractabel will “leverage its international expertise in fusion”. The company has worked on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in France.
     Nick Hawker is the CEO of First Light Fusion. He said, : “The design and development of Machine 4 … is well under way as we aim for completion well before the end of this decade. We are delighted to be working with Tractebel through this critical phase, leveraging their unrivalled expertise in major fusion infrastructure projects.”
     Denis Dumont is Tractabel’s chief global nuclear officer. He said, “With this contract, Tractebel re-affirms its commitment to support the UK nuclear industry, fission and fusion, and help meet the UK’s ambition to be net-zero by 2050 … thanks to our internationally recognized nuclear experience, we are able to provide innovative solutions to the most challenging projects. We look forward to developing our relationship with First Light Fusion.”
     First Light Fusion and the UKAEA signed an agreement in January of this year for the design and construction of the Machine 4 facility. Machine 4 is not intended to generate electricity. However, it will assist in the development of technology needed for future inertial confinement fusion energy power plants. First Light said that it will “have a stored electrical energy of c.100 mega joules with the capability of launching projectiles at 60kms per second. This speed on impact inside the target will accelerate to c.200kms per second as a result of First Light’s exclusive amplifier technology. The amplifier focuses the energy of the projectile into the fusion fuel, both boosting the pressure from impact to deliver to the fuel and shaping the waves to produce spherical implosions”. First Light’s current Machine 3 launches a projectile at c.20 kms per second.