U.S. firm makes history with nuclear microreactor, opening door for real-world testing: ‘The first reactor developer to reach this milestone’

The world is turning to new forms of electricity to try to slow the overheating of the planet, and one U.S. company is marking another first in the nuclear power industry.

Westinghouse, the behemoth that helped industrialize America, has cleared a preliminary hurdle to have a 5-megawatt microreactor tested in two years, as Interesting Engineering reported.

The front-end engineering and experiment design phase has been completed, and the machine is one of three that could be evaluated at the world’s first microreactor test bed, per a Department of Energy news release.

The eVinci nuclear microreactor needs only 2 acres to produce a wide range of power, from several kilowatts to 5 megawatts, and can operate for over eight years without refueling, according to the DOE and a company news release.

“Westinghouse is the first reactor developer to reach this milestone in support of siting its test reactor at NRIC’s Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments (DOME) test bed at Idaho National Laboratory (INL),” the company stated.

Radiant and Ultra Safe Nuclear are also working toward putting their reactors on trial at the National Reactor Innovation Center. It’s another step to the deployment and commercialization of the technology, which promises carbon-free energy.

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The first phase was to gain approval with a microreactor preliminary safety design report; the third stage is to create a timeline for an end-to-end reactor test program at INL and to submit preliminary documented safety analyses, per Westinghouse.

“NRIC is a DOE national program to accelerate the development and deployment of advanced nuclear technologies like the eVinci microreactor,” the company stated. “Its objective is to create four new experimental facilities and two large reactor test beds by 2028 for comprehensive technology demonstrations and experiments — and to finalize two advanced nuclear technology experiments by 2030.”

While nuclear power offers cleaner energy when it comes to atmospheric pollution, the tech does still produce nuclear waste, and some scientists caution against investing in more nuclear instead of renewable energy, which is cheaper and even safer. Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, has said that “certain alternative reactor designs pose even more safety, proliferation, and environmental risks than the current fleet.”

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The industry is awash with similar firsts. Tokyo-based Helical Fusion is developing a steady-state nuclear fusion reactor, and Danish shipping giant Mærsk is taking part in a study to evaluate the feasibility of nuclear-powered cargo vessels. Other companies are racing to patent nuclear batteries.

All these changes would help us move away from the dirty energy sources polluting Earth and changing life as we know it — causing record temperatures and intensifying hurricanes and floods, for example.

As battery backup infrastructure is still in its early stages of assisting the grid in storing surplus renewable energy so that the power is available consistently regardless of weather, proponents of nuclear power consider it a more consistent source of non-carbon-polluting energy in the meantime. While all forms of power have interruptions, nuclear power is generally unaffected by weather conditions, outside of weather disasters, and is thus more reliable on an hour-to-hour basis until more battery storage capacity reaches the grid in more areas.

The first eVinci microreactor could be in use by 2029, cutting 55,000 tons of air pollution annually. It is set to be located in Saskatchewan, Canada.

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