Agreement details: According to the press release announcing this new agreement, AtkinsRéalis will serve as the exclusive engineering, procurement, and construction management provider for proposed FANCO’s EAGL‑1 reactor, fuel fabrication, and recycling facility projects in North America.
The planned scale of future deployments has not been revealed. What is known is that FANCO is collaborating with Indiana on deploying its first nuclear power plant in the state.
Last November, FANCO announced that it had established its headquarters in Indianapolis and detailed its plans for a “nuclear energy park,” along with related manufacturing facilities. In this newest press release, AtkinsRéalis got on board with plans to expand into Indiana. The company announced that it will “establish a significant presence” in the state, including “an office near FANCO headquarters, collaboration on workforce and supply chain development initiatives, and participation in the Nuclear Indiana Coalition and other industry groups.”
The press release also highlighted that employees from both companies have previously collaborated on projects like the Department of Energy’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership and Advanced Fuels Campaign.
Now, the parties have set a goal for the first EAGL-1 to begin “delivering power at scale by 2033.”
More about the reactor: The EAGL-1 is being designed as a liquid metal fast-spectrum reactor using lead-bismuth coolant. What, if anything, “EAGL” stands for has not yet been disclosed by the company.
As for size, the company has said the EAGL-1 “is designed to generate 240 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 1.5 million homes from the typical six-reactor cluster.” FANCO has yet to explicitly state how many reactor units its potential first deployment would include.
As for fuel, the company claims to be “agnostic” and to be considering mixed oxide fuel and other transuranic fuels “sourced from existing DOE stockpiles—materials too contaminated for use in most reactors.” The EAGL-1 system could also use high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel, according to the company.
As for regulatory engagement, FANCO enjoyed some early tailwinds from a Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) voucher given to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to study its reactor. According to the company, PNNL concluded that “the EAGL-1 design, subject to further design development and analysis, would be licensable under existing [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] criteria, with no new rules, and no novel regulatory frameworks.”
FANCO has also stated that it is currently building a lead-bismuth test loop “that will provide the NRC with unequivocal, real-world performance data, rather than relying solely on models and historical analysis.”
Earlier this year, the company submitted its regulatory engagement plan for the EAGL-1 to the NRC. There, FANCO detailed that it initially plans to pursue a construction permit under 10 CFR Part 50.
