Ultra Safe Nuclear

Nucleation invested into Ultra Safe Nuclear in Q2 2022. This company has now completed a Chapter 11. 

Ultra Safe Nuclear was engaged in the development of a number of advanced nuclear reactors, for land and space, and also began to manufacture its own TRISO fuel, before it was precipitiously shut down.

We are pleased to pre-announce the second of our two investments for Q2-2022. We are making an investment in the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation, one of the leading developers of 4th generation micro-reactors and fuels. 

Ultra Safe Nuclear is developing an advanced nuclear fission reactor that will have superior safety features. This impressive team was founded on the core belief that for nuclear adoption to increase, nuclear safety must be paramount and so has made the safety case of its reactors its central organizing principal.

USNC has designed an advanced energy system that delivers 15 MW of high-termperature (high-quality) heat or 5 MW of electricity and integrates a deep layering of innovative safety elements which effectively reduce meltdown risk for this design to almost zero. Most notably, the USNC design improves on:

• Inherent safety with accident and proliferation-deterrent micro-encapsulated fuel packaged in a heat-resistant ceramic form. This design can withstand temperatures far greater than the operational temperature of the reactor, without melting down and prevent the possibility of mischief with spent fuel.
  
• Intrinsic safety through a micro-modular design that separates the heat production from direct power generation and provides power automatically, without needing operators or continuous onsite maintenance.
  
• Physical safety by routine installation of the nuclear portion within a reinforced subterranean canister that provides an extra layer of protection and separation from events on the surface, whether this may be weather-related, freak accident or intentional sabotage event.
• Passive safety, through a design that utlizes a molten salt storage heat buffer system between the reactor and power generation, enabling a decoupling of the reactor heat and usage, an automatic shutdown capability and natural, convection-based cooling underground in the event of any loss of power.
  

Thus, any possible malfunction would never rise to the level of an accident. Their design, already protected with more than 20 patents, are not vulnerable to loss of coolant (as with Three Mile Island), loss of power (Fukushima) or runaway criticality (Chernobyl). Additionally, there is no metal cladding to be melted and create hydrogen explosion risk and the ceramic casing of the spent fuel will outlast the internal radioactivity of the transuranics and protect the environment.

Ultra Safe is furthest along in the development of its specialty fuel and its micro modular reactor, called the Micro Modular Reactor (MMR). However, the company has multiple divisions, which include several transportable nuclear power platforms, a family of chargeable atomic batteries utilizing radioisotopes and a nuclear thermal propulsion group, working on space engines. It has even earned $5 million in revenue from work done in other divisions for the government.

Notable Achievements 

Ultra Safe's 4th gen reactor design, called the Micro Modular Reactor, is in an advanced stage of liencing, having already completed Phase I and II of the Canadian nuclear regulator's (CNSC) vendor design review process. This system will deliver power on-demand with near 100% avaiability, which makes it well-suited to systems that contain wind or solar generators as well. Offered as a fully charged "nuclear battery," these systems will store 2.6 billion kilowatt hours of heat available at power levels ranging between 5 and 45 MW(th) and convertible into 1 billion kilowatt hours of electric power, as needed. Additionally, multiple units can be deployed together. The company has initiated CNSC's Phase III, with an application for plant construction at the Chalk River site.

Ultra Safe was selected to be the technology partner for Global First Power, a joint venture set up by Ontario Power Generation (OPG), Ontario’s largest utility and a leader in Canadian nuclear power. They are partnering to build the Chalk River demonstration plant, which may be the first 4th gen build project in Canada and which is on target to begin producing power in 2026.

Ultra Safe is also pursuing licensing in the U.S. and is working in partnership with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USNC’s first US customer, on pre-application licensing activity with the US NRC, which is seeking approval to build the MMR at the university for research, power and district heating purposes. Lastly, the first multiple-unit MMR is being planned for demonstration at the Idaho National Lab (INL). In all USNC expects to have 5 MMRs operational at three sites by 2027.

USNC has also recently finished construction of and commenced operation at its new fuel fabrication facility on the site of the national lab in Oak Ridge, TN and is starting production of its proprietary fuel. This facility will test produce a small number of full-scale modules of USNC's TRISO-based FCM, its fully ceramic micro-encapsulated fuel for which it has approval for use in demonstration, testing and qualification. (See: this Nuclear Newswire announcement.)

With an advanced reactor that is neither too small nor too large, USNC has targeted one of the largest customer niches for energy purchasers, with a power design that hits the sweet spot in size and output temperatures for a very wide array of heat consumers, which includes nearly any industrial company, district heating users (such as college campuses), research reactors and military bases. As such, in addition to three demonstration sites already in process, the company has an active sales pipeline of dozens of distinct customers and potentially hundreds of reactors with an estimated market value in the $100s of billions.

USNC has maintained tight proprietary and quality control over every element of its reactor table construction and design, from its fuel fabrication on up to pre-formed cement blocks used in construction. They pair that in-house control with an open design platform for power generation, which ground-level portion of the power plant can be constructed to suit the specific energy requirements of the customer and which can use commercially available high-quality generators, turbines and auxillary production areas, such as those used in gas plants, so as to keep balance of plant costs as low as possible.

USNC's expertise, rapid progress, broad vision and partnerships make it a very notable player among those nuclear development ventures moving from “paper” to “plant.” It has also developed a highly strategic business model which is primed to help accelerate deployments with easy-to-finance structure, while it builds a sequence of factories for rapid manufacturing of reactor components in quantity for both its terrestrial and space applications. 

USNC has demonstrated not just superior design capability but an entirely impressive ability to execute against its vision in a cost-effective and efficient way. The company's execution in building its fuel facility in well under a year portends future success in its plans to launch factory production as soon as possible, following completion of its first demonstration project with OPG. Having followed their progress for a while now, we have built a very high level of confidence that this is an extraordinarily well-run team with its finger on the pulse of the market, a clear view of its target customers' needs and a discernable lead in the delivery low-cost manufactured modular, flexible and supremely safe clean power systems.