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WASHINGTON, Oct 30 (Reuters) – The Bill Gates’ funded reactor company TerraPower and ASP Isotopes said on Wednesday they have struck a deal to produce a new fuel, now only made in commercial amounts in Russia, for an expected next generation of nuclear power plants.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
Nuclear power gets support from both major U.S. political parties, but Russia is the only major supplier of the fuel, called high assay low enriched uranium, or HALEU, for the new reactors companies plan to build.
U.S. companies are racing to make HALEU for a potential wave of next-generation small modular reactors including TerraPower’s $4 billion Natrium plant in Wyoming, planned to be built at an old coal plant.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, TerraPower had to delay the start date of Natrium by about two years to 2030. The U.S. wants to support new HALEU suppliers and this month started issuing contracts to four U.S.-based companies for HALEU.
WHERE WOULD THE HALEU PLANT BE BUILT?
The companies did not disclose where the HALEU plant would be built. A corporate source said it would likely be built in South Africa.
KEY QUOTE
The head of TerraPower said the facility will complement a variety of HALEU suppliers in development. “We know the HALEU supply was seen as a challenge and we’re kind of solving it with a belt and suspenders approach,” Chris Levesque, TerraPower’s president and chief executive told Reuters.
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BY THE NUMBERS
The companies did not reveal financial details of the deal, which they called a “term sheet.”
APSI’s chief executive Paul Mann said the facility could be started with tens of millions of dollars instead of billions of dollars needed for some plans to make HALEU.
HALEU is uranium fuel enriched up to 20% compared to fuel used in today’s U.S. reactors which is only enriched up to about 5%. Non-proliferation experts have warned that HALEU could be a weapons risk if it got into the wrong hands, and that fuel enriched to 10% to 12% would be safer.
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