TerraPower awards its next round of vendor contracts for Kemmerer Unit 1

TerraPower/Natrium (Kemmerer Unit 1)

TerraPower awarded 12 supplier contracts for Kemmerer Unit 1, its Natrium reactor under construction in Wyoming. Most are design or supply contracts for the sodium systems and fuel handling, and they move the supply chain for the first-of-a-kind plant from design toward hardware. TerraPower expects the plant to be complete in 2030.

• Contracts include control rod drive design (BWXT Canada), the plant cyber system (Mirion), an air-sodium heat exchanger (Thermal Engineering International) and fuel transfer lift design (Marmen).
• Several cover the inert gas blanket above the liquid sodium: control skids (Boston Government Services), monitoring skids (Merrick) and a tag-gas analyser (Teledyne Brown) that helps locate leaking fuel.
• Natrium is a 345 MW sodium-cooled fast reactor; molten-salt heat storage lets it boost output to 500 MW for peaks.
• Sodium cooling runs at near atmospheric pressure, but sodium reacts with water and air, which is why so much equipment exists to contain and monitor it.