KNOXVILLE, TENN. – Nuclear industry panelists said here Wednesday the time has come for advanced reactor projects to mature from pilot stages to commercial deployment.
That was a central theme discussed during the “Next Generation Nuclear Opportunities” at the Energy, Technology and Environmental Business Association’s (ETEBA) annual Business Opportunities and Technical Conference.
“The era of demonstration is over as far as I’m concerned given the opportunity ahead of us,” said Patrick Brown, Centrus Energy senior vice president. “Nuclear leadership is about execution. Execution at scale, safely of course, but also, I think to capture the opportunity ahead of us.”
With many nuclear reactor designs out there, Brown said the industry needs to focus on a few and standardize them to deploy at fleet scale to achieve domestic energy dominance. Some demonstration projects are needed but the main push should be more fleet scale commercial projects, Brown said.
Electricity demand is growing in the United States with data centers helping drive the surge, Oklo Senior Director Everett Redmond said. Commercial reactors have the opportunity to meet the increased demand, he said.
Michael Zupan, Kairos Power senior integration engineer, said demonstration reactors can help verify first-of-a-kind technology.
Through demonstration reactors, companies can go through the learning curve and work to de-risk its technology and bring down the costs of future reactors.
Kairos is currently developing its Hermes Demonstration Plant and Hermes 2 Demonstration Plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The company plans to complete those plants to ultimately lead up to a commercial fleet, Zupan said.
Some of the industry panelists said the government has made efforts in the right direction to de-risk nuclear projects through streamlining licensing decisions.
One of President Donald Trump administration’s May 23 nuclear-related executive orders made extensive changes at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in an attempt to streamline nuclear licensing processes.
A change to come from the executive action to overhaul the nuclear regulator was the focus on reducing NRC’s final decision time windows to 18 months for new reactor applications.
Through those streamlined processes, Loris Kim, Orano Project IKE operations and commissioning manager, said Orano has consistently been in contact with NRC on its proposed uranium enrichment facility, Project IKE, application before submitting it.
“For any company you are not going to start building unless you have the license; not going to invest all that money until you have the license,” Kim said. “The license is really on the critical path, so shortening that critical path makes a huge difference.”
Redmond also said DOE’s reactor pilot program has been a valuable effort from the government to de-risk and streamline nuclear projects. The reactor pilot program, which was also guided by the May 23 executive orders, envisions at least three reactors reaching criticality by July 4, 2026.
Oklo was selected by DOE for two nuclear projects under the pilot program.
“It is really a good opportunity for folks to accelerate and try something out in a very safe and secured, regulated manner,” Redmond said. “It’s a new pathway to try to accelerate things.”
Other panelists were Partrick Ellis, Type One Energy Group business development director and Mickey Wade, Oak Ridge National Laboratory associate lab director for fusion and fission energy and science directorate.