Week 43 of 2023

Three nuclear energy innovation news!

Focus on microreactors!

1️⃣ The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) signs a cooperative agreement worth about $2.5 million with X-energy. The objective is to develop a 3-5 MWe transportable mobile microreactor at a competitive price. X-energy also receives support from the United States Department of Defense (DOD) for a transportable microreactor under its Project Pele initiative.

2️⃣ Radiant, Ultra Safe Nuclear, and Westinghouse Electric Company secure $3.9 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) through the National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC). The funding will be used to perform tests at the Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments (DOME), a repurposed Experimental-Breeder Reactor-II containment structure at Idaho National Laboratory. 

3️⃣ Westinghouse Electric Company inaugurates an "eVinci accelerator hub" in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, aimed at expediting the commercialization of its eVinci microreactor. The 8,000 square-meters facility will be support engineering and licensing operations, prototype trials, testing, business development, sales, and manufacturing of critical components like heat pipes.

👨‍🎓 Paper of the week: "Final Measurement of the 235-U Antineutrino Energy Spectrum with the PROSPECT-I Detector at HFIR", Physical Review Letters (2023).

👉 Most precise measurement of antineutrino energy emitted from Uranium-235 fission.

👇 Did you spot anything else? Let me know!