21 Feb (NucNet): Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) is to support the development of TerraPower’s Generation IV Travelling Wave Reactor (TWR) under a memorandum of understanding signed by the two US-based companies.
B&W said it will provide TerraPower, whose backers include Bill Gates, with “services and programme support”, which could include design and fabrication of engineered components and fuel fabrication process development.
TerraPower is trying to develop the 1,000-megawatt TWR to operate for up to 100 years without refuelling or removing any used fuel from the unit.
TerraPower says that by greatly simplifying the nuclear fuel cycle, TWRs could improve the cost, safety, social acceptability, and long-term sustainability of nuclear energy as a source of emissions-free electricity.
Unlike B&W’s Generation III++ small modular reactor, mPower which is based on pressurised water reactor technology and standard fuel enriched to five percent, the TWR is a larger reactor based on Generation IV technology and designed to use depleted uranium as fuel.
