TerraPower LLC, the nuclear power company backed by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, has become the first US developer of an advanced nuclear power plant to seek a federal construction and operating permit to test its technology on a commercial scale.
The company filed an application in late March with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its Natrium Advanced Nuclear Demonstration Project, with plans to begin non-nuclear work at the Wyoming coal plant site in withdrawal this summer and nuclear construction once the application is approved.
Bechtel was awarded the EPC contract in 2020 for the project, which is expected to be completed in 2028 at an estimated cost of $4 billion. About half of that cost will be covered by funding from the US Department of Energy.
“The TerraPower project is a full-blown nuclear power plant from the NRC’s perspective,” agency spokesman Scott Brunell told ENR, noting that the demonstration plant will produce electricity when completed. A demonstration project by the NRC’s definition would not produce electricity, he said.
TerraPower in February also selected five suppliers, primarily specialized engineering firms, to support the project to be located in the town of Kemmerer. Contracts were awarded to GERB Vibration Control Systems, Thermal Engineering International, Hayward Tyler Inc., Framatome US Government Solutions and Teledyne Brown Engineering. BWXT Canada was selected last August to design the intermediate heat exchanger.
The contract award process for the project is ongoing, TerraPower said.
Building permit approval generally takes 36 months, but because TerraPower has worked with the NRC during the pre-application phase, it should be faster, Brunell said. The agency will give the company an estimated approval time when it determines it has all the information it needs to begin a full review, he added.
Advanced nuclear propulsion
Natrium, a TerraPower and GE Hitachi technology, includes a 345 MW sodium-cooled fast reactor with a Milton salt-based energy storage system. The non-light water reactor has improved fuel use, improved safety features and a simplified plant design that requires less overall material to build, the company said.
The project will feature a molten salt-based energy storage system that can increase the system’s output to 500 MW and allow the plant to seamlessly integrate with renewable resources, TerraPower said.
The project is designed to validate the design, construction and operation of the technology at scale. It is part of the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program which received $2.5 billion from the 2021 federal infrastructure act to support the design, licensing, construction and operation of two advanced reactor technologies: Natrium and the X-energy Xe-100 reactor.
TerraPower filed the request shortly after receiving a 40-page NRC overview of reactor safety and environmental issues on March 19, the latest in a series of similar pre-application assessments the agency has provided .
“TerraPower will be the first company to submit a commercial advanced nuclear reactor to the NRC and we are confident on our schedule to submit this application to the NRC this month,” the company said.
Another advanced nuclear developer, Kairos Power, was the first to submit to the NRC a request for a proof-of-concept for its technology and a second request for a two-unit test version, he said Brunell.
Kairos is taking a different approach to building by going through a build learning cycle to work out bugs, he said. The company said it is focused on reducing technical risk “through a new approach to test iteration that is often lacking in the nuclear space.”
Kairos plans to build a demonstration plant by 2030.
