Skip to main content

PBMR News

By Eric McErlain
The South African company that's making the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) has announced their plants to build a pilot fuel plant to supply the demonstration power plant:
"We're already in the market for acquiring equipment relevant to the production of nuclear fuel,"” highlights PBMR construction projects group project pirector Brent Hegger.

"This process will probably continue for the next nine to twelve months,"” he reports.

The pilot fuel plant will be built at the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) complex at Pelindaba, but construction will not start until the PBMR company gets all the necessary licences and permits from the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism and the National Nuclear Regulator.

"“Once we have all these approvals, we are looking at a 24-month building programme for the pilot fuel plant,"” he states.
Mining Weekly is also reporting that the PBMR Company is attracting interest from potential customers who have other applications in mind beside electric generation:
"“We have a team working on technicalconcepts and a business case for usingPBMRs for several process-heat applications, including desalination, hydrogen production, and multipurpose industrial and resource-extraction applications, and we hope this will be finished by October,"” reveals PBMR construction projects group project director Brent Hegger.

"Desalination would be a spin-off of process-heat plant applications of the PBMR,"” he points out.
Finally, they also provide a nice sidebar on how the PBMR works.

Technorati tags: , , , , ,

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wednesday Update

By
From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fluor Invests in NuScale

By
You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...
1 comment
Read more

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more