ML23083B367

M230330: Slides/Supporting Presentation Material - J. Shafer - Briefing on Nuclear Regulatory Research Program

ML23083B367
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Issue date:	03/30/2023
From:	NRC/OCM
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M230330
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Nuclear Portfolio at ARPA-E Jenifer Shafer March 30, 2023

ARPA-E Advanced Nuclear Fission Portfolio Fission ~$160M overall investment

- MEITNER (2018)

• Can we greatly reduce AR CapEx?

- GEMINA (2020)

• Can we greatly reduce AR OpEx?

- ONWARDS (2021) Transmutation

• Can we greatly minimize the disposal impact of AR wastes?

- CURIE (2022)

• Can we improve the cost and monitoring of UNF (used nuclear fuel) reprocessing?

- Transmutation

• Active area of program development Attentive to commercialization & deployment March 30, 2023 Nuclear l ARPA-E 2

MEITNER (Modeling-Enhanced Innovations Trailblazing Nuclear Energy Reinvigoration)

Goal: Develop and demonstrate technologies that greatly improve advanced reactor performance MEITNER is supporting transformative technologies Metric Units State-of-the-Art for AR plant designs that simultaneously achieve:

Overnight construction cost $/We 2-7

• Low overnight construction cost

• Largely autonomous operations to staffing level On-site construction time Months > 60

• Safety when considering Total staffing level (on-site & off-FTE/GWe 450-750

- time before intervention in an accident site)

- potential for public exposure to radiation Emergency planning zone (EPZ) Miles 10 and 50

• Very short on-site construction time Time before human response

• Proliferation resistance via safeguards by design required for an accident Days 3

• The ability to achieve either or both:

- easy electrical grid integration with intermittent Onsite backup power kWe > 0 kW sources such as wind and solar Ramp rate without steam bypass power capacity/min 5%

- availability to provide economical industrial Process heat temperature ºC N/A process heat March 30, 2023 Nuclear l ARPA-E 3

GEMINA (Generating Electricity Managed by Intelligent Nuclear Assets)

Goal: Develop the tools and cost basis for ARs to achieve fixed O&M costs of

$2/MWh without shifting costs to other parts of LCOE Awardee teams are developing the following for one or more of the most promising AR designs:

• Digital twins for advanced reactor systems

• Relevant cyber physical systems

• O&M approaches for advanced reactors

• Cost models and design updates March 30, 2023 Nuclear l ARPA-E 4

ONWARDS (Optimizing Nuclear Waste and Advanced Reactor Disposal Systems)

Goal: Develop technologies to significantly minimize the disposal impact of wastes from ARs while maintaining disposal costs in the range of $1/MWh ONWARDS seeks to support the development of technologies that enable:

• 10x reduction in waste volumes or repository footprint with no weakening of safeguards standards

• Better than 1% accuracy in fissile mass measurement in UNF processing in high-radiation backgrounds

• Improving proliferation resistance of U and TRU materials recycling

• No pure fissile material streams produced during processing (< 0.1% actinides by mass in waste streams)

• High performance waste forms for AR HLW across multiple disposal environments.

The production of new waste streams is required to be minimal relative to a once-through fuel cycle and have an established path to a robust waste form or final disposition.

March 30, 2023 Nuclear l ARPA-E 5

CURIE (Converting UNF Radioisotopes Into Energy)

Goal: Enable commercially viable reprocessing of used nuclear fuel (UNF) from the current light water reactor (LWR) fleet by resolving key gaps/barriers in reprocessing technologies, process monitoring, and facility design Global Metrics

1. significantly (i.e., at least an order of magnitude) reduce the volume of LWR HLW requiring permanent disposal,

2. maintain disposal costs in the range of 0.1¢/kilowatt-hour (kWh)4,

3. provide a 1¢/kWh5 fuel cost for a 200 metric tons heavy metal (MTHM)/yr nth-of-a-kind (NOAK) facility,

4. in situ SNM process monitoring approaches that predict, within 1% uncertainty and under representative conditions, the post-process material accountancy, and

5. development of UNF separations which do not produce pure plutonium streams March 30, 2023 Nuclear l ARPA-E 6

Nuclear Heat for Industrial Decarbonization 50 Nuclear reactors provide clean firm heat primarily & 40 electricity LCOH ($/GJ) 30 Maximize constant use of Nucleare-th Winde-th Solar (CSP) nuclear by hybridizing with 20 heat, electricity or heat + 10 electricity consumers Nuclearth Natural Gas Coal 0

105 104 103 0.01 0.1 1 Emissions (tCO /GJth) 2 Closes today (3/30) at 5 pm!

Nuclear l ARPA-E

If it works will it matter?

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