Southern Nuclear to load first-of-a-kind assemblies in early 2025
The Vogtle-2 nuclear power plant in Georgia has become the first US commercial reactor to be authorised by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to use accident tolerant fuel exceeding 5% uranium-235 enrichment.
The company said the milestone “underscores the industry’s effort to optimise fuel, enabling increased fuel efficiency and long-term affordability for nuclear power plants”.
In 2022, Southern Nuclear signed an agreement with Westinghouse to load four lead test assemblies (LTAs) with next-generation fuel features into Vogtle-2. The LTAs use key components from Westinghouse’s high energy fuel initiative and the EnCore fuel programme.
These features include Adopt uranium dioxide pellets, Axiom fuel rod cladding and chromium-coated cladding combined with Westinghouse’s advanced Prime fuel assembly design.
With regulatory authorisation now in hand, Southern Nuclear and Westinghouse are moving forward with the manufacturing of these first-of-a-kind fuel assemblies with planned installation in early 2025.
Southern Nuclear said the authorisation of enrichments greater than 5% uranium-235 is one tenet of the broader efforts by industry to develop and deploy batch quantities of advanced fuel technologies, which are a set of new technologies that enable higher enrichment and have the potential to increase safety at US nuclear power plants by offering better performance during normal operation, transient conditions and accident scenarios.
