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Advanced Reactor Concepts, LLC (ARC) and its Canadian subsidiary ARC Nuclear Canada Inc. are companies looking to commercialize an advanced small modular nuclear reactor, the ARC-100.
The company was founded in 2006 by CEO Donald M. Wolf and Vice Chairman of the Board Scott L. Campbell. Advanced Reactor Concepts is based in Chevy Chase, Maryland and ARC Nuclear Canada in Saint John, New Brunswick.
In March 2017, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and ARC announced a collaboration to develop and license the ARC-100 with initial deployment in Canada. The companies will pursue a preliminary regulatory review by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission through its Vendor Design Review process.
In July 2018, ARC announced an agreement to work with New Brunswick (NB) Power and its affiliates to explore commercialization of the ARC-100 in New Brunswick, Canada, starting at NB Power’s Point Lepreau nuclear plant site and thereafter at other sites in Canada and worldwide.
The ARC-100 is based on technology proven by over 30 years of the successful operation of the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II). The EBR-II was operated by the US government's Argonne National Laboratory in Idaho as a very successful test and demonstration of sodium-cooled fast-reactor power plant.
The basic EBR-II technology has been enhanced by ARC through numerous and significant proprietary innovations (for which patents have been granted and applied) to create a “Fourth Generation” solution that will have wide applicability in both the US and export markets around the world.
ARC-100 is an exportable, factory-produced, 100 MWe nuclear reactor with fixed fuel costs for 20+ years. It is a sodium-cooled, metal fueled, fast-reactor designed to provide safe, clean, affordable and proliferation-resistant nuclear power.
Advantages include:
- The use of sodium instead of water as the heat transfer agent allows the reactor to operate at ambient pressure. Its containment vessel is a double-walled stainless steel tank rather than a 12 inch thick forged steel containment vessel required for traditional light water reactors.
- The ARC-100 can be used to recycle traditional nuclear waste to generate energy as well as burn or transform plutonium that could be used for weapons.
- Small enough that its modularized components can be shipped and installed at the site using regular commercial equipment.
- Fail-safe protection, in the event all electric power to the plant site shuts down meltdown prevention does not require extra pumps, operator intervention or any external system .
