Part 1 of 2 Parts
      On October 7th, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) notified Congress that recipients for its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) had been chosen and will be made public next week.
    The ARDP program was officially launched by the DoE on May 14th. It will focus DoE and non-federal resources through cost-shared agreements with members of the nuclear industry to enable actual construction of advanced nuclear reactors over the near and mid-term. The program will be started with two hundred and thirty million dollars in Congressionally appropriated money for Fiscal Year 2020.
     The DoE started the process in May through one of their funding opportunity announcements (FOA) with a four billion dollar award ceiling. The FOA outlined two different approaches that could support up to seven advanced reactor projects and subsidize their adoption of the next 15 years.
      The recipients will be announced next week for the first pathway. The Office of Nuclear Energy will provide one hundred and sixty million dollars in the first year of funding through cost-sharing partnerships to help U.S nuclear companies demonstrate two advanced nuclear reactors that can be constructed and put into operation in the next five to seven years.
     The second track comprises “risk reduction for future demonstration awards,” which will support two to five additional “diverse” advanced reactor designs that have a “commercialization horizon that is approximately 5 years longer than the Advanced Reactor Demonstrations.”
     The FOA also identified a third pathway that was described in in H.R. 1865, Advanced Reactor Concepts – 20. The purpose of this track is to support development of “at least two new public-private partnership awards focused on advancing reactor designs toward the demonstration phase.” These additional projects would have a “commercialization horizon that is approximately 5 years longer than the Risk Reduction for Future Demonstration awards.”
     The period for submitting applications for the Advanced Reactor Demonstration FOA closed on August 9th.
      A consortium made up of GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH), TerraPower and Bechtel have submitted a joint proposal for the Natrium, a three hundred and forty five megawatt sodium fast reactor (SFR) with a molten salt storage system to the ARDP FOA. GEH has declined to comment on whether they have submitted a proposal for their BWRX-300 reactor design.
     Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) has also announced that it submitted a proposal. This June, the Seattle-based company formed a joint venture called Global First Power with Ontario Power Generation to build, own and operate a proposed Micro Modular Reactor (MMR) high temperature gas cooled reactor HTGR demonstration at the Chalk River Laboratories sites in Ontario.
     Also entering the competition is Oklo, the developer of the one and a half megawatt Aurora micro-reactor. Earlier this year they submitted the first-ever combined license application for an advanced non-light water reactor (LWR) to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Oklo officials said that the ARDP terms may prove too limiting for its innovative developmental model. The company also sought a risk reduction award.
     The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in September confirmed that it has submitted a proposal to the FOA. This could be for an installation at its Clinch River Nuclear site in Tennessee. Last December, the NRC issued approval for an early site permit for two or more small modular reactors (SMR) modules of up to eight hundred megawatts total.
Please read Part 2 next