Urenco And USNC To Cooperate On Advanced Reactor Deployment

Urenco USA (US branch of Urenco, ENS Corporate Member) and Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) announced last 1st March an enrichment services supply agreement as part of the fuel supply programme for USNC’s Micro-Modular™ Reactor (MMR®).

Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation will purchase enriched uranium products from Urenco USA for use in the manufacture of Tri-structural Isotropic (TRISO) particles and Fully Ceramic Micro-encapsulated (FCM®) fuel via USNC’s the planned joint venture with Framatome announced at the end of January.

This first batch of EUP is slated for delivery to the USNC-Framatome fuel manufacturing joint venture in 2025, coinciding with the start of their TRISO and FCM fuel factory operations.

USNC said that this fuel production capacity will be used to fuel MMR deployments with some availability to the wider advanced reactor market.

Read the full Urenco Press Release.

As presented by USNC, its Micro-Modular™ Reactor (MMR®) Energy System is a fourth-generation nuclear energy system that delivers safe, clean, and cost-effective electricity and process heat to users anywhere. The MMR is being licensed in Canada and the U.S., but last December USNC signed also a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Finland’s Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) to explore the potential deployment of a micro-modular reactor at or near its campus.

In June 2021, USNC started working also with NRG (Nuclear Research & Consultancy Group – ENS Corporate Member), which implements a program to analyse the performance and safety attributes of the FCM fuel designed for use in its Micro Modular Reactor (MMR).

Irradiation tests are conducted by NRG at its High Flux Reactor (HFR) in Petten, Netherlands.