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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.

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