U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry today announced the selection of nine domestic projects to receive nearly $20 million in funding for cost-shared research and development for advanced nuclear technologies. These awards are through the Office of Nuclear Energy’s (NE) funding opportunity announcement (FOA) U.S. Industry Opportunities for Advanced Nuclear Technology Development. This is the second group of awards announced, following a similar announcement in late April.
"Subsequent quarterly application review and selection processes will be conducted over the next five years. The Department intends to apply approximately $30 million of additional FY 2018 funding to the next quarterly award cycle for innovative proposals under this FOA," the department said.
The funding has been categorically broken down into three sections, including first of a kind (FOAK) nuclear demonstration projects, advanced reactor development projects and regulatory assistance grants, which support companies through the lengthy regulatory process for establishing new nuclear technology.
Under the FOAK Nuclear Demonstration Readiness Project category, the DOE announced funding of $7 million with an additional $7 million in matching funds for Phase 2 of NuScale's Small Modular Reactor project.
Corvallis, Oregon-based NuScale Power will build on Phase 1 project activities to advance the licensing and design maturity to meet a commercial operation date of 2026 for the first NuScale plant. The specific project scope being funded represents calendar year 2018 activities associated with the next phase (Phase 2) of the U.S. product realization effort required to bring the NuScale design to market. Specific project activities include completion of the independent verification and validation licensing report; completion of the reactor building design optimization; and conduct of level sensor prototypic testing. There is potential for extension of this award to complete calendar year 2019 activities associated with Phase II of the NuScale project if the 2018 activities are completed successfully.
Five other projects were funded under the Advanced Reactor Development Projects category.
These included $400,000 going to Basin Consulting Group of Kennewick, Washington, for development of a "small modular reactor power plant based on lead-bismuth fast reactor (LBFR) technology. This work aims to develop a pre-conceptual design and preliminary cost estimate for a lead-bismuth small modular reactor.
GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy of Wilmington, North Carolina, is receiving close to $2 million to examine ways to reduce BWRX-300 reactor plant construction costs through elimination of coolant accidents, embedded (below grade) design and construction and the use of pooled off-site resources that can be applied simultaneously at multiple sites.
With $1.1 million in DOE funding, The Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, will work on Phase 3 Experimental Verification of Post-Accident Integrated Pressurized Water Reactor (iPWR) Aerosol Behavior."
The Electric Power Research Institute (Palo Alto, CA) will further improve the models used to estimate the post-accident radionuclide releases from integral pressurized water reactors (iPWRs) with a goal of reducing regulatory requirements for emergency planning zones.
Flibe Energy of Huntville, Alabama has teamed with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (in Richland, Washington) on a Fluorination of Lithium Fluoride-Beryllium Fluoride (FLiBe) Molten Salt Processing project that aims to examine the use of nitrogen trifluoride as an agent to remove uranium from a molten-salt fuel mixture as a preliminary step for the removal of fission products. DOE Funding: $2,101,982. Non-DOE Funding: $525,500.
Holtec International of Camden, New Jersey, will advance hybrid laser ark welding for use in fabrication of SMRs and other nuclear components with assistance from $6.3 million of DOE funding.
In addition, DOE is awarding just under $500,000 to support regulatory processing in the Advanced Light Water Reactor Deployment: Advanced Boiling Water Reactor Source Term Reduction proposed by Pittsburgh Technical Institute of Oakdale, Pennsylvania. They will develop a technical basis to reduce source terms associated with Level II and Level III probabilistic risk assessment for advanced boiling water reactor designs.
Finally, DOE has selected two companies to receive GAIN technology development vouchers in this second review cycle. The companies selected are Yellowstone Energy of Knoxville, Tennessee, in the amount of $160,000, and ThorCon US of Stevenson, Washington, in the amount of $400,000.