Essel Group ME, a subsidiary of Indian multinational conglomerate Essel Group, announced it had agreed to invest $18 million in Swedish-Canadian LeadCold. Essel said that funded was intended to enable LeadCold to complete a pre-licensing design review of the SEALER reactor with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) and to aid research and development efforts necessary to obtain a licence to build commercial SEALER units in Canada. However, LeadCold has now announced that it signed an investment and financing agreement for $200 million, which it said will enable it to license and construct the first privately funded lead-cooled nuclear power plant.
Using advanced technology, small nuclear reactors (SMRs) may provide clean and safe base-load energy in locations where today diesel power is the only choice, such as in Arctic regions, remote islands, off-grid communities, mining and the shipping industry, and to replace diesel generators are responsible for 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The small lead-cooled SEALER design is claimed to generate 3-10 MWe over a 10-30 year period without refueling. After operation, the first SEALER units will be transported to a centralized recycling facility. LeadCold says its engineers have developed novel aluminium steel alloys that are highly corrosion-resistant in contact with liquid lead. This, the company claims, addresses the major obstacle having hampered the commercial implementation of this technology.
The CNSC agreed to conduct phase 1 of a vendor design review for the SEALER design concept. A pre-licensing vendor design review is an assessment, carried out at the request of a vendor, of a nuclear power plant design based on its reactor technology. The objective of the review is to verify the acceptability of a design with respect to Canadian nuclear regulatory requirements. LeadCold is a spin-off from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, where lead-cooled reactor systems were developed.
Original working URL: http://world-nuclear-news.org/NN-LeadCold-seals-funding-agreement-with-Essel-2601174.html
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