AtkinsRéalis engages with NRC on U.S. CANDU deployment

Last week, Canadian nuclear and engineering company AtkinsRéalis announced that it has formally submitted a notice of intent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission "to begin the licensing process" for its CANDU reactor technology in the United States.

The details: According to a press release from AtkinsRéalis, its formal entrance into NRC engagement represents "a key milestone" in its strategy to "to deploy proven large-scale nuclear power in support of significant U.S. electricity demand."

Several key details were missing from this first announcement, namely, which NRC licensing pathway the company intends to pursue, the site or sites where it intends to deploy reactors, the number of reactors it is planning for the United States, and the general timeline for these plans.

Some of these details will be determined as AtkinsRéalis continues to engage with a variety of stakeholders. According to last week's announcement, the company is currently in conversation with "U.S. utilities, state governments, and prospective anchor power purchasers, including hyperscale data center operators and large industrial users, to evaluate potential deployment opportunities."

Notably, the company said it is focusing its efforts on both existing nuclear sites and jurisdictions with supportive nuclear policy frameworks "to reduce siting risk and accelerate timelines."

CANDU technology: AtkinsRéalis is the original equipment manufacturer and exclusive license holder for CANDU technology and is the sole owner of subsidiary Candu Energy, the company in charge of CANDU maintenance and new build projects. In 2011, AtkinsRéalis acquired the license for the CANDU design from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., a state-owned company involved in the original development of the reactor in the 1950s.

CANDU is short for Canada deuterium uranium, and as its name indicates, it uses deuterium (in heavy water) as a moderator. There have been many iterations of the CANDU pressurized heavy water reactor design differing by hundreds of megawatts in capacity. AtkinsRéalis bills its current Enhanced CANDU-6 design as 700-plus megawatts.

PHWRs like the CANDU are markedly different from the light water reactors that make up the U.S. fleet. As AtkinsRéalis points out in its press release, PHWRs can be refueled while still on line, avoiding lengthy refueling outages. They can also be fueled with natural uranium-eliminating enrichment cost and supply chain concerns. On the other hand, heavy water is currently not produced in the United States and could incur its own cost and supply chain concerns.

If the NRC and AtkinsRéalis continue to collaborate on CANDU licensing and the NRC approves the design, it would be the first time the NRC has granted any such approval to a PHWR. That being said, the United States previously was home to a PHWR that predated the formation of the NRC. That reactor was known by a few names: Parr, the CVTR, or the Carolinas-Virginia Tube Reactor. The CVTR was a 17-MWe reactor that entered construction in 1960, reached initial criticality in 1963, and was permanently shut down in 1967. It was built as a demonstration of PHWR technology, and despite achieving that goal, did not lead to a broader U.S. deployment of PHWRs.

Joe St. Julian, nuclear president of AtkinsRéalis, stressed in the company's announcement that PHWRs could be deployed at scale in the United States, saying that their fuel flexibility, "combined with decades of on time and on budget performance, will give the United States greater control over its nuclear fuel supply chain, which is of paramount importance in the current geopolitical climate, while delivering dependable, low-carbon baseload power."