Accelerating the Deployment of Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems - 2020

Nuclear Power Industry

Terrani reports in 2020 that the DOE’s Transformational Challenge Reactor program is harnessing recent advances in manufacturing, materials, and computational sciences to rapidly build and operate an advanced reactor core. oon after Enrico Fermi’s Chicago Pile-1 went critical for a brief duration in December 1942, the construction of the first continuously operating reactor, the X-10 Graphite Reactor, was initiated in February 1943 at Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tenn. On November 4 of that year, a mere nine months after the start of construction, the reactor began operation. This marked the onset of what Alvin M. Weinberg referred to as “the first nuclear era,” during which many reactors of various designs and operating parameters were built and demonstrated across the United States.

Forty years ago, the Fast Flux Test Facility was the last U.S. non-light-water reactor to reach criticality, and it has since been decommissioned. Today, nuclear energy is based exclusively on significantly scaled-up versions of Hyman G. Rickover’s water-cooled and water-moderated design from those early times. Although these existing LWR plants are skillfully operated to the highest capacity factors for any energy source, they struggle to compete economically with low-cost natural gas burned in combined cycle plants. Most existing nuclear plants are now quite old and are beginning to be phased out. The outlook for the development of new plants faces significant challenges associated with high up-front capital costs and multiple-decade-long development and deployment timelines.

Investors are understandably hesitant to make large capital investments with such lengthy deployment timelines. A new approach to nuclear energy is needed. We must demonstrate that we can develop and deploy advanced, efficient nuclear energy systems in a reasonable time frame. This is the essential objective of the Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR) program: to show that highly improved, efficient systems can be created by harnessing the major advances in manufacturing, materials, and computational sciences that have emerged since the first nuclear era. To deliver real value by leveraging these advancements, the TCR program is developing technologies at the right readiness levels for industrial adoption. The TCR program is also implementing an agile approach to nuclear energy deployment. The program, which began in 2019, will use advanced manufacturing to create an operating nuclear reactor in 2023. This demonstration is the key to delivering tangible technologies that will enable a new approach for advanced, competitive nuclear deployment.