Ansaldo Nucleare and Westinghouse Advance In Testing LFR

Ansaldo Nucleare and Westinghouse Electric Company (ENS Corporate Members) announced this week a milestone achievement in their work on Generation IV lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) with the completion of the first testing campaign at the Passive Heat Removal Facility, recently built at the Ansaldo Nuclear plant in Wolverhampton (UK).

The testing campaign advances within Phase 2 of the Advanced Modular Reactor (AMR) programme partially funded by the UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which was awarded to Westinghouse with Ansaldo Nucleare as the main supplier, supported by ENEA, Jacobs, and several UK Universities.

As part of this contract, Ansaldo Nucleare led the design, purchase, installation and commissioning of two state-of-the-art experimental facilities to support Westinghouse’s lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) technology, the Versatile Loop Facility (VLF) and the abovementioned Passive Heat Removal Facility (PHRF).

These test facilities are a key asset for collecting experimental data supporting accelerated development of LFR technology.

Read more on Ansaldo Nucleare Press Release.

This achievement is part of the wider initiative launched by the cooperation agreement signed last October between Westinghouse and Ansaldo Nucleare for the joint development of Generation IV LFR technology globally, and with near-term emphasis in key European countries such as UK, Romania and Belgium.

The LFR technology combines the use of liquid lead as a coolant, high-temperature operation, and fast neutron spectrum with engineering solutions promoting design simplicity and robustness. The objective is step change performance improvement relative to traditional nuclear technology, including enhanced economics, market versatility beyond electricity and improved sustainability.