Matthew Nelson
Advanced Reactor Concepts, General Atomics and Massachusetts Institute of Technology will collectively receive a total of $70.4M in funds from the Department of Energy to mature their nuclear reactor concepts as part of the fiscal year 2020 iteration of a technology demonstration program.
Under the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program's ARC-20 initiative, the department plans to provide around $56M to the awardees over four years while industry partners will shoulder 20 percent of the projects' overall funding, DOE said Tuesday.
ARC will submit a design concept of a seismically isolated advanced sodium-cooled hub based on a 100 MWe reactor facility while General Atomics will create a 50-megawatt electric fast modular reactor design that includes fuel, safety and operational performance metrics.
MIT will mature a modular integrated gas-cooled high temperature reactor design to conceptual stage as part of the ARC-20 program.
DOE Secretary Dan Brouillette said the department seeks to create a safe market for commercial reactors via the program.
Aside from the ARC-20 awards, the department allocated $30M to support three risk reduction projects through ARDP. DOE also intends to award $20M for the demonstration of nuclear reactor technologies.
