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NRC approves TerraPower construction permit
Today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has approved TerraPower’s construction permit application for Kemmerer Unit 1, the company’s first deployment of Natrium, its flagship sodium fast reactor.
This approval is a significant milestone on three fronts. For TerraPower, it represents another step forward in demonstrating its technology. For the Department of Energy, it reflects progress (despite delays) for the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP). For the NRC, it is the first approval granted to a commercial reactor in nearly a decade—and the first approval of a commercial non–light water reactor in more than 40 years.
E. A. Schneider, U. B. Phathanapirom, R. Eggert, E. Segal
Nuclear Technology | Volume 183 | Number 2 | August 2013 | Pages 160-177
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A18109
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A market-clearing model of the uranium and enrichment industries through 2030 is presented. Built around thorough databases of primary and secondary uranium supplies as well as enrichment facilities, the model derives market-clearing conditions by locating the intersections between the annual supply-and-demand curves for uranium and enrichment services. Considering the effects of secondary supplies including highly enriched and natural uranium inventories along with depleted uranium enrichment, the model solves embedded optimization problems to account for trade-offs between uranium and enrichment requirements. The model can inform policy decisions tied to uranium inventory management and sale and market effects of purchase and disbursement from a uranium bank. This paper documents the methodologies behind the model, describes a stochastic implementation to propagate uncertainties, and contrasts its forecasts to static projections. Further, it is applied to an illustrative reference case featuring moderate (2.6%/yr) demand growth for reactor fuel. The model predicts near-level uranium prices with declining separative work unit prices and enrichment tails assays through the mid-2020s. This behavior is largely driven by the coming online of several new centrifuge enrichment plants and capacity expansions at others, which encourages more aggressive tails assays while suppressing uranium requirements.