The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) has just released a list of new awards for the third of three programs under its new Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP). The total of the awards is twenty million dollars. The DoE Office of Nuclear Energy selected the projects which will receive Fiscal Year 2020 funding in the ARDP Advanced Reactor Concepts-20 program. The DoE intends to spend about six hundred million dollars in the next seven years in the ARDP. The aim of the program is to assist the domestic private nuclear industry in the demonstration of advanced nuclear reactors in the U.S.
      The DoE issued an ARDP funding opportunity announcement in May of this year. This announcement included the ARC-20 awards, the Advanced Reactor Demonstration awards and the Risk Reduction for Future Demonstration awards. With respect to the ARC-20 projects, the DoE expected to spend about fifty-six million dollars over the next four years. Private industry partners of the DoE are expected to supply at least twenty percent in matching funds. The goal of the ARC program is to help the progression of advanced reactor design and development in their earliest phases.
      The DoE announced the selection of the following three U.S.-based teams for receipt of ARC-20 funds.
Inherently Safe Advanced SMR for American Nuclear Leadership.
      Advanced Reactor Concepts will deliver a conceptual design for a seismically isolated advanced sodium-cooled reactor facility. It will build on the initial pre-conceptual design of a one hundred megawatt reactor facility. The total value of the award to be spent over three and a half years is thirty-four million four hundred thousand dollars. The share of the cost that will be borne by the DoE is twenty-seven million five hundred thousand dollars.
Fast Modular Reactor Conceptual Design
     General Atomic will develop the conceptual design for a fast modular reactor with verification of key metrics including fuel, safety and operational performance. The design will be for a fifty megawatt fast modular reactor. The total of the award over three years will be thirty-one million one hundred thousand dollars. DoE will supply twenty-four million eight hundred thousand.
Horizontal Compact High Temperature Gas Reactor
     The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will further develop their Modular Integrated Gas-Cooled High-Temperature Reactor (MIGHTR) concept from its pre-conceptual stage in order to support the development of a commercial version. The total award over three years will be four million nine hundred thousand dollars with DoE supplying three million nine hundred thousand dollars.
      Dan Brouillette is the U.S. Secretary of Energy. He said, “ARDP is significant because it will enable a market for commercial reactors that are safe and affordable to both construct and operate in the near- and mid-term. All three programs under ARDP pave the way for the United States to be highly competitive globally.”
     On December 16th of this year, DoE chose five teams to receive thirty million dollars in initial funding for risk reduction projects under its ARDP program. All of the selected designs have the potential to enter into a global competition once they are deployed. The five projects are the BWXT Advanced Nuclear Reactor; Westinghouse’s eVinci Microreactor; Kairos Power’s Hermes Reduced-Scale Test Reactor; the Holtec SMR-160 light-water small modular reactor; and the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment, a project led by Southern Company Services Inc.
      Two projects being undertaken by TerraPower and X-energy were selected last October to receive one hundred million dollars in initial funding under the DoE’s Demonstration projects pathway to develop and construct two advanced nuclear reactors that can be licensed, constructed and connected to the grid within seven years.
      The DoE noted that “Funding for ARDP beyond the near term is contingent on additional future appropriations, evaluations of satisfactory progress, and DOE approval of continuation applications.”