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A company developing an innovative micro-nuclear reactor for commercial power and heat generation is to recruit 50 engineers as it ramps up design activities to present a safety case to the nuclear regulator in 2018.
U-Battery’s high-temperature gas reactor will have a capacity of either 4MW of electricity or 10MW of heat, or it can be mixed and matched to output an amount of each.
The reactor, which is at the conceptual design stage, will use TRISO fuel, historically used mainly in research reactors. The firm’s reactors, effectively combined-heat-and-power batteries, could possibly be run remotely and unmanned, said Paul Harding, an adviser to Urenco, a member of the U-Battery consortium.
TRISO fuel consists of grains of enriched uranium embedded in a ceramic material. The fuel will be within a graphite reactor, operating at 700°C and cooled by helium. A nitrogen heat exchanger using a closed Brayton cycle will transfer the heat to a turbine and generator set or output it for direct use. The entire footprint of the reactor building will be the same size as the penalty area on a football pitch, said the company. The reactors will be modular, so up to 20 could be combined.
Harding said: “Our vision is to be British. The consortium has the range of skills needed to make this happen, and the design builds on British know-how in gas-cooled reactors.
“The reactor is naturally self-limiting and accident-tolerant and is most suitable for remote off-grid locations. We see thousands deployed around the world, and we’ve already had very strong interest from organisations in Poland and Canada. There’s a real sense of market pull for this.”
U-Battery is a consortium of Urenco, Cammell-Laird, Amec Foster Wheeler, Atkins and Laing O’Rourke. It was formed in 2011 to develop academic research done by the University of Manchester and Delft University in the Netherlands.