SPECIAL REPORT | NANO DEEP DIVE
to actually developing a reactor’ and so we spoke to the Department of Energy and the national labs about solutions for this problem. They were fairly certain that if we were to pursue a fuel fabrication facility, as an example, it would be the only Cat II facility of its kind in the United States, and it would de-risk our project, but it would also open up a different line of business for us, a new opportunity. So that’s what we did.” Working with industry professionals and the national
Above:
Annular Linear Induction Pump (ALIP) technology is a key enabling technology for the ODIN microreactor
have already designed the rigs and they are already
building up the team because it is going to have to be expanded massively now. We’re already looking at a test bed reactor site, but we can build the initial rigs now to validate models and then we’re going to have to do almost the same rigs again, but with nuclear material, explains Walker, adding: “We’d like to get that going and have the site finalised at an initial land preparation later this year, with the idea that next year we begin buying in that nuclear material and then doing nuclear tests to produce the final data we’ll need to go to licensing. At that point, we’re essentially ready to go through that process to produce that commercial product.” Once the licensing is complete NANO intends to be in a position where they can immediately go to market and start supplying the customer base. As Walker says: “We’ve had interest from big mining companies, from the military, and the island nations too because they’re looking for cleaner solutions that aren’t nearly as expensive as diesel.”
Below: NANO’s advanced fuel transportation system aims to service a growing market for HALEU fuel
Tackling commercial risks A key theme running through the NANO Nuclear strategy is addressing commercial risk. Walker observes: “I think where NANO became very different from the competition very quickly is that when we were looking to de-risk the final product, we realised that there were massive capability gaps in the United States for actually being able to build a reactor because of deficiencies with the associated supply chains.” Walker cites some reactor designs which rely on the development of novel fuels to operate. This and similar issues prompted a different methodology from NANO. “We looked at that and thought ‘that’s a major impediment
laboratories, NANO sourced land and a technical team to design a fuel fabrication facility. In terms of fuel fabrication, NANO plans to buy in enriched uranium and then fabricate that into fuel assemblies. “Currently there is a US facility planned for HALEU TRISO, but the majority of the HALEU [High Assay Low Enriched Uranium] market is not going to be TRISO and our reactors don’t use that so it’s going to have to be something we do by ourselves. There might be opportunities for collaboration with some of the bigger players as we begin this, but we were quite surprised that they weren’t really developing in this area themselves. The thing with HALEU is we know it’s going to happen, and everyone is designing around that, but it’s still an anticipated industry essentially. To build out these facilities is a big commitment. While there are big nuclear fuel players, I don’t think many of them are building micro- reactors or SMRs, so they wouldn’t be de-risking their own final product by building these capabilities for themselves.” Clearly, many SMRs and different reactor designs are looking at HALEU which potentially represents a market and a different revenue stream for NANO. “The advantage here is that it’s building back the US infrastructure, but it’s also providing us with a revenue stream that comes online even before the micro-reactor is deployed”, says Walker. He argues that even if both the company’s reactors are ultimately unsuccessful, this approach offers a model for continued profitable operations. “If anybody wins the SMR micro-reactor race ahead of us, that’s great, because what we want to do is be able to supply everybody. The fuels business will be independent of NANO’s reactors, but all SMR companies, all micro-reactors, if DoD, DoE, the national labs need HALEU, which they certainly do, and they’ll need it fabricated, that’s something we want to provide. We want to make that business as widely available to everybody as possible. If somebody comes up with a better reactor it’s actually wonderful that they’ve done that, because it has more commercial potential and if it has more commercial potential and they’re manufacturing more of these things then that’s more fuel for us to fabricate.” This diversified, vertically integrated business model
also extends to transportation. Walker explains that work on the fuel fabrication business led to another opportunity for NANO: “We also realised that we needed a way to move commercial quantities of HALEU fuels. Again, we spoke to the DoE, and we found out that there had been technology that had been funded by the Department and the national labs had built, but funding had stopped. There was a technology that was just sitting on the shelf so we went out and bought it and that put us in the lead, essentially, in that race to create a way to actually move commercial quantities of fuel around the country.” The technology that had originally been designed was
of a basket type for the movement of uranium dioxide, but NANO is adapting it so it can also move uranium hexafluoride, nitride, hydride, and uranium metal for
40 | July 2024 |
www.neimagazine.com
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