Terrestrial Energy USA announced today it had informed the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of its plans to license a small modular reactor (SMR) in the USA. Terrestrial said it intends to start "pre-application interactions" with the regulator this year and to make its licensing application in late 2019.
The NRC recently published a letter from Terrestrial responding to the agency's Regulatory Issue Summary (RIS) published on 7 June last year. An RIS is an NRC request for information regarding future nuclear reactor licence filings.
In its letter, dated 18 November 2016, Terrestrial said it plans to submit an application to the NRC for a design certification or a construction permit "no later than October 2019".
Terrestrial included the status of the design, analyses, testing, licensing, and project planning for its Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR), which is a liquid-fuelled, high-temperature, 400 MWt advanced reactor power plant design
Why is Terrestrial Energy's Integral Molten Salt Reactor a big deal ?
- A molten salt 7.4 MWth test reactor was operated at Oak Ridge from 1965-1969. So no question about technical feasability
- A conservative first IMSR design should be competitive with established power at about 3 cents per kWh
- Later designs should be able to get lower than 1 cent per kWh
- Design is walk away safe with passive safety systems
- First designs would produce 6 times less nuclear waste and later designs can close the fuel cycle
- Canada can use the first several hundred reactors to directly produce steam to profitably produce oil from the oilsands
- Canada and Terrestrial Energy can thus use the oilsand reactors to profitably climb the learning curve before factory mass production of supersafe, super efficient and disruptively lower cost reactors
- These system could provide 100% of global electricity demand without any emissions
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Reposted via Next Big Future
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