Lightbridge Corporation (LTBR)

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DOE funds MSR and Fuel Pellet Reactor Development

DOE funds Southern Companies molten chloride nuclear reactors and X-energy fuel pellet reactor

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the selection of two companies, X-energy and Southern Company, to further develop advanced nuclear reactor designs. These awards, with a multi-year cost share of up to $80 million for both companies, will support work to address key technical challenges to the design, construction, and operation of next generation nuclear reactors.

At $40 million each in matching funds over the next five years, the grants will go to X-energy, a little-known Maryland-based startup that is developing a new version of a pebble-bed reactor, and to Southern Company, the Atlanta-based utility that is working with TerraPower on molten-salt reactors.

It’s a promising development for the advanced nuclear industry, which has struggled to find funding and regulatory approval. Much of the money raised so far has gone to just two companies, Tri Alpha Energy, which is working on fusion reactors, and TerraPower.

X-energy was founded in 2009 by Kam Ghaffarian, who previously founded Stinger Ghaffarian Technologies, a major contractor for NASA. Based in Greenbelt, Maryland, the company is working on a high-temperature reactor that is cooled by gas, rather than water, and uses small fuel pellets inside a graphite cylinder, rather than solid fuel rods. The design, says Pete Passano, the company’s vice president of fuel production, makes the reactor immune to meltdowns. Encased in layers of carbon and ceramics, the individual fuel pebbles, each the size of a poppy seed, maintain their integrity at temperatures of 1,800 °C, far beyond the temperatures that might be reached inside the core in the event of an accident, according to tests at Oak Ridge and Idaho national laboratories.