X-Energy, a privately-held developer of nuclear power reactors, has been awarded a cost-sharing grant from the U.S. Department of Energy under its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. The company will received $80 million in the first year and could receive as much as $4 billion over the next five to seven years, depending upon qualifying costs. Apparently, the DOE wants to give nuclear power a boost by supporting new reactor designs that cost less to build and operate than conventional nuclear power plants.
X-Energy
characterizes its Xe-100 design as a ‘gas
cooled, high-temperature’ nuclear power reactor. Many investors might know it as a ‘pebble bed
reactor,’ which houses the fuel element in spheres of graphite. The graphite ‘pebbles’ replace fuel rods that
are typical of conventional nuclear power reactors. The pebbles will contain micro-fuel
called TRISO particles (TRistructural-ISOtropic) consisting of a bit of uranium
fuel coated with layers of isotropic materials deposited with fluidized
chemical vapor deposition. Encased in
graphite the company’s engineers believe its proprietary fuel particles cannot
melt even under temperatures up to 1600 degrees Centigrade.
X-Energy says the nuclear core of its reactor will require 220,000 pebbles each about the size of a gumball. The anticipated pebble count is expected to generate 80 megawatts of power. Helium will be used to cool the pebbles in the reactor core, generating steam in an electric power plant adjacent to the reactor. Helium does not easily absorb impurities so it is expected to be less likely to become radioactive than water usually used to cool nuclear reactors.
The pebble bed
reactor is one type of very high temperature reactors (VHTR) that are the
target of a recent initiative to promote nuclear power. However, the pebble design has been around since
the 1940s during wartime efforts. The
design was not taken seriously until the 1960s when German developers attempted
a commercial installation. A prototype
pebble bed power reactor at the Julich Research Center in West German was connected
to the grid in 1967, but a series of accidents triggered a shutdown in 1988. At
one point a pebble had become lodged in a feeder tube, and in the attempt to
free the pebble, some radiation was released. An investigation completed in
2014 found operational mistakes and an administrative cover-up. The reactor has since been dismantled.
The consortium
of municipal electric companies, AVR Ltd., owned the Germany prototype and subsequently
licensed the technology to the People’s Republic of China. China built a ten-megawatt
prototype at Tsinghua University called the HTR-10. A larger-scale version called the HTR-PM is under construction at Shidao
Bay Nuclear Power Plant in Shandong Province.
China has pushed
forward with the HTR-PM despite words
of caution from nuclear power engineers who have urged caution. Detractors have pointed out the tendency to
form hot spots in the core, high levels of radioactive dust and large volume of
radioactive waste. There is a history of
problems that has not been adequately scrutinized. Besides the wayward pebble at the Germany
plant other graphite-moderated designs were subject to devastating accidents at
Chernobyl in Russia and Windscale in Britain.
X-Energy
engineers and scientists are undaunted by history and apparently not
intimidated by China’s head start. The
company also has competition from other private developers such as General Atomics’
Peach Bottom. Investors might
feel the same enthusiasm. Even though the
company received a boost from the DOE, it will like need to raise additional capital
to pay for its share of development work.
For qualified investors with a taste for risk, it might be worthwhile to
keep close watch on X-Energy developments.
Neither the author of the Small Cap Strategist web
log, Crystal Equity Research nor its affiliates have a beneficial interest in
the companies mentioned herein.
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