70+
Years developing SFR technology
4x
Greater fuel efficiency than light water reactors (LWRs)
100x
Greater electricity usage
GEH’s SFR portfolio
A more than 60-year legacy leading to sodium fast reactors
GE believes that innovation comes from taking existing technology to create something new. Everything from GE’s founding innovation—Thomas Edison’s lightbulb—to the first civil nuclear power plant connected to a commercial power grid in 1957 has led GEH to develop its current generation of sodium-fast reactors (SFRs) for commercial power.
Background: from waste to watts
SFRs show great promise as a solution to a problem that has plagued the nuclear power industry since its inception: What to do with spent nuclear fuel.
About 95% of available energy remains in spent fuel removed from light water reactors (LWRs). Instead of storing that spent fuel in casks in the desert for thousands of years, what if that fuel could be used to generate additional electricity to help meet the world’s growing demand?
That’s the motivation behind GEH’s SFR reactors. As part of an Advanced Recycling Center, these reactors could recycle all the uranium and transuranics (elements heavier than uranium) contained in spent nuclear fuel to generate at least a hundred times more electricity and decrease the long-term radiotoxicity of the remaining wastes.
PRISM
The Power Reactor Innovative Small Module (PRISM) is GEH’s concept for a pool-type, liquid metal-fueled small modular SFR. With a rated thermal power of 840 MWe and an electrical output of 311 MWe, the PRISM reactor uses a metallic fuel submerged in a bath of liquid metal (sodium) at atmospheric pressure to maintain reactor temperatures well below design limits. Natural circulation removes heat from the reactor module.
The PRISM reactor concept is currently being put into practice in two reactors: the Natrium reactor in Wyoming and the ARC-100 in Canada. Learn more about these systems below.
Natrium
A retiring coal plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming, is the site for a project intended to demonstrate GEH’s SFR technology in practice. Working in concert with TerraPower and numerous other stakeholders, the Natrium* reactor will use its high-temperature heat to power a molten salt storage system that can store a greater amount of energy than can typically be stored in contemporary battery storage facilities.
TerraPower has created a comprehensive web site chronicling the Natrium reactor’s development, which you can read by clicking on the link below.
ARC-100
New Brunswick Power in Canada has selected the ARC-100 reactor for implementation at its Point Lepreau site. The Affordable, Robust, Compact SFR reactor is based on GEH’s PRISM configuration and is expected to produce 100 MWe as well as industrial heat comparable to larger coal-fired plants. The ARC-100 reactor promises to reshape the energy industry by providing scalable, carbon-free energy to New Brunswick Power’s customers.
Click on the link below to learn more about the ARC-100.
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*a TerraPower & GE-Hitachi technology
