Project Overview
X-energy is developing Gen-IV High-Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGR) focusing on the advantages in sustainability, economics, reliability and safety that this technology potentially affords. As a leading entry in a class of small modular reactors (SMRs) the design brings nuclear power within reach for countries, utilities & communities.
X-energy required support with reactor design, licensing related activities and safety analyses.
How We Helped
We have been engaged with X-energy since 2020 in support of the Xe-100 reactor design which is intended to be licensed in both the United States and Canada. In addition to the conceptual design support directly related to this opportunity, we continue to provide the following support to X-energy.
Licensing Related Activities
- Generation of submissions to the CNSC as part of the Vendor Design Review (VDR) process. The purpose of the CNSC VDR process is to provide the Canadian regulator the opportunity to determine whether they see any fundamental barriers of the reactor design in Canada. The response to date from the CNSC has been positive
- Generation of documentation such as Preliminary Safety Analysis Report (PSAR) in support of X-energy’s campaign for new build at OPG, major utility in Ontario, Canada
- Support on NEI 18-04 and Integrated Decision-Making Process (IDPP) support, including development of Special Treatments and independent review of safety analysis results
- Support for Requirements Management for Regulations, Codes and Standards for both Canada and the US
- Support for generation of a Business Risk Classification report
Safety Analysis Related Activities
- Execution of thermal dynamic analysis using the Flownex code for nuclear safety analysis
- Support for fuel qualification
- Generation of preliminary Probabilistic Risk Assessment reports specifically for hazards assessment
- Generation of preliminary decommissioning, hazards, radiation zoning and waste management reports associated with radiation protection and waste
- ALARA assessment/support
- Approach, methodologies, computer codes and tools to be used for integrating aging effects in safety analysis
We are also providing support on code qualification activities such as qualification to Canadian and US standards (i.e., N286.7 and NQA-1) for the nuclear safety codes that X-energy is using for the nuclear safety analysis. This includes efforts on codes such as XSTERM, Flownex and VSOP.
