Week 6 of 2024

Three nuclear energy innovation news!

🍀 Westinghouse Electric Company signs an agreement with Community Nuclear Power to deploy (at least) four AP300 SMRs in Northeast England. Jacobs and Interpath Advisory are also involved to develop a fully licensed site. Commercial operation is expected by the early 2030s. This is part of the development of a Green Energy and Chemical Hub, with the ambition of producing e-fuels and e-chemicals.

🍩 Thea Energy (US) raises a 20m$ Series A led by Prelude Ventures, with participation from 11.2 Capital, Anglo American, Hitachi Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Mercator Partners, Orion Industrial Ventures, and Starlight Ventures. The startup aims to replace the complex design and manufacturing constraints of stellarators fusion devices by software and clever command & control. A pilot-scale reactor is planned for later this decade and a larger scale, 350 MW demo plant in the 2030s.

🧂 NAAREA (FR) and Thorizon (NL) sign a strategic partnership agreement to advance the development of molten salt reactors in Europe. They notably intend to pool their resources for safety and security demonstrations, develop shared laboratories and test facilities, secure access to reprocessed fuel materials, and increase political and public support for their technology.

👨‍🎓 Paper of the week: five teams independantly peer review and confirm the NIF's breakeven fusion claim. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-nif-fusion-breakeven-peer-multiple.html

👉 They did do it.

👇 Did you spot anything else? Let me me know!