The UK government launched an initiative in December 2017 to make up to £44m R&D funding available for developing advanced reactors. This is formally known as the AMR Feasibility & Development (F&D) project.
As part of this project and in line with s89 of the Energy Act 2013, BEIS requested advice from ONR on the level of confidence in seven AMR fission reactor designs being able to meet UK regulatory requirements in the future.
We developed regulatory criteria based on our existing regulatory guidance to apply it in the context of the AMR F&D project and, in May 2019, we delivered the advice to BEIS following evaluation of the submissions provided by the seven vendors. As outlined in the Nuclear Sector Deal, the reactor technologies and vendors involved were:
- a sodium fast reactor design by Advanced Reactor Concepts LLC;
- three high temperature gas reactors by DBD Ltd, Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation and U-Battery Developments Ltd;
- a molten salt reactor by Moltex Energy Ltd; and
- two lead fast reactors by Westinghouse Electric Company UK Ltd and LeadCold