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COVER STORY | MARVEL microreactor. The start-up procedure will be of very


high interest with the neutronics characteristics in the immediate vicinity of the reactor. Some fundamental questions like that will be answered just through operation of the microreactor,” says Jackson. Key research goals of MARVEL include streamlining national lab capabilities by establishing authorisation, qualification, and validation processes for microreactor technologies. Once operational, MARVEL will also be used to potentially support regulatory approval processes and test microreactor applications for various electrical and non-electric applications, such as thermal storage, water purification, and district heating, as well as demonstrate the capability to manage grid demand and reactor power supply. MARVEL will also be used to evaluate systems for remote


Above: MARVEL will support deployment of future advanced microreactors


monitoring and operations, and develop autonomous control technologies. Jackson comments: “MARVEL is due to be installed in the Transient Test Reactor facility. It will be more or less remotely operated in that when the Transient Test Reactor is operational people are not in the building per protocol. I assume, similarly, that when the MARVEL microreactor is operational, people will not be in the building so we’ll demonstrate remote operation even though we’re just down the street. Under my base microreactor programme we’re also developing the microreactor Automatic Control System. I am careful to point out that what we’re not doing is seeking autonomy. What we’re trying to do is automate decision-making and action to the extent possible. Automatic or automated control is where through machine learning or artificial intelligence schemes the system in some way makes an automatic decision based on data that it’s receiving. A simple example is if you sense a temperature excursion near the core, you might want to rotate the control drums to a certain degree. That’s a very simple operation that through machine learning we can achieve and we don’t necessarily have to have a human in the loop. We want systems making not binary decisions, but graded decisions based on data input.” Jackson continues: “We’re doing that in the background as a base microreactor programme research and development project in support of supporting all developers, but MARVEL may afford us an opportunity to demonstrate some of that as well.” Myers also picks up on the connections between MARVEL and other INL projects focused on advanced microreactors: “INL do a lot of work with the military and with the DOD [Department of Defense] and are heavily exploring the options for those mixed remote systems, for island grids that currently are running mostly on diesel. We are really exploring mixtures of nuclear, solar, wind, batteries, desalination type systems and maybe even some central heating and cooling for particular facilities. We are diving pretty deeply into that.” He continues: “Beyond the Stirling engine type system some of the other advanced reactors that we think are coming from industry are going to have air Brayton power conversion machines on them or steam turbine machines. We’re exploring the characteristics of coupling those with battery storage and grid forming inverter systems and how we can provide a stable electrical system with all those things together and not have to swing the reactor all over the place to cover load steps and have the most controllable and manual system that way.”


14 | December 2023 | www.neimagazine.com Key to this kind of integrated system is the control system


that can manage all the different disparate elements. As Myers says: “These particular Stirling engine outputs are relatively easy for us to manage even with our existing microgrid controls but when you move into something much more complex for a power conversion system like an air Brayton cycle or a steam Rankine turbine those, electromechanical interactions between the generator, the loads and the renewables and battery storage are a lot more complicated and so there’s much more coordination and control that needs to be done there.” Jackson summarises: “The way I like to view MARVEL is as


a tiered hierarchy of objectives. First is initial criticality, second is initial operation, and third is sustained operation. Once we address the initial hierarchy of objectives, then we can start to take more risks and deploy more advanced automation schemes, for instance.”


Call for collaboration Alongside MARVEL’s core research goals, a key aspect of the programme is to support commercial deployment of advanced microreactors. To that end, INL is embracing external partners with a view to leveraging the MARVEL deployment. Knighton observes: “If there are other industries or partnerships that want to demonstrate using MARVEL and the microgrid and even brining their own reactor prototypes and demonstrations, we’re open to those types of possibilities.” Meyers says, “The point is we are not holding this exclusively for our control and utilisation. As an example, when we connect the very small microgrid, companies may want to demonstrate microgrid capability on a nuclear powered microgrid. So, we’re opening the doors, we’re soliciting feedback, and we want companies to pitch their ideas for utilisation of MARVEL and the microgrid. Knighton continues, “We are planning some demonstrations out on the site and possibly with advanced reactor companies, if people partner with us to put advanced reactors out there. Those could couple with hydrogen electrolysis or with ammonia or synthetic fuels production, so there’s a lot of options that we’re looking at as far as an energy transition powered by nuclear. It’s going to take a lot of energy and we think nuclear is a really great source to provide that massive amount of energy.” He closes with an open invitation for advanced reactor


companies: “We are designing integrated energy systems around advanced nuclear power heat and the heat of existing reactors. We’re looking at a wide variety of reactors that are on the market in the design phase and we’re working with different advanced reactor companies. MARVEL is out front, the vanguard if you will, and is paving the way so that advanced reactor companies can come to INL and we can work with them to do that integrated energy system work of using the enormous and dense heat output to re- power the clean energy economy of chemicals, products, and fuels. I think a lot of that integrated energy system work will happen after we get advanced reactor companies partnered with us and bring some of their demonstrations and prototypes out to INL to work on. MARVEL prepares the way for that to happen.” Still a few years off deployment, MARVEL is nonetheless


intended to lead the way in terms of advanced microreactor commercialisation. As Jackson concludes; “It’s the tip of the spear for some of the long-term objectives for the Idaho National Laboratory.” ■


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