Aalo Atomics to build a commercial reactor inspired by MARVEL

Summary:

• Aalo will be commercializing a scaled up (30 MWth) microreactor inspired by INL’s MARVEL.
• Aalo’s NRC licensing process will be streamlined by leveraging MARVEL’s nuclear test data.
• MARVEL was granted permission (by DOE) to begin cutting metal this week.

The Second Atomic Age is coming

This week, the team at INL was granted permission (by DOE) to start cutting metal for MARVEL. This is the first new microreactor being built in the US in decades [1]. Fabrication is scheduled to take 6–9 months, with criticality planned for 2025-2026.

Why is this important? And what does it have to do with Aalo?

No nuclear company has achieved regulatory approval of an advanced, non-water-based design. This is partly due to a catch-22: The NRC won’t give you a license without nuclear test data, but you can’t get this test data without a license.

Aalo will address this by leveraging MARVEL.

We plan to pair scaled-down nuclear test data from MARVEL (100 kWth) with full-scale non-nuclear test data from a rig which we’ll build. This will provide regulators with a thorough picture of our reactor’s performance. In our early conversations with the NRC, feedback on this approach has been positive [2].

During MARVEL's authorization process with the DOE, a non-nuclear prototype named PCAT (pictured above) was constructed and tested. This is an important step in the engineering design process to validate the thermal hydraulic behavior of the system.

What scale of reactor is Aalo planning?

Aalo’s first reactor will have a power output of 30 MWth (10MWe), and we’ll target an nth-of-a-kind LCOE of 7 ¢ / kWh. Our  second product line will be much larger (300 MWth), which we believe will achieve the important 3–5 ¢ / kWh threshold (cheaper than coal). Both reactors will be sodium-cooled, LEU+ UZrH-fueled, and factory-fabricated.

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Notes

• [1] MARVEL is part of the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy Microreactor Program
• [2] While the DOE is in charge of authorizing INL’s MARVEL, the NRC has closely watched its development and is familiar with the design.