Cranberry Township-based Westinghouse Electric Co. recently submitted a eVinci Microreactor Preliminary Safety Design Report (PSDR) to the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC).
The report includes comprehensive safety and operational reference materials. The eVinci team, comprised of more than 300 engineers, prepared the report.
Submission is a necessary step toward bringing the microreactor to commercial operation, something Westinghouse aims to do by the end of the decade. The previous step was DOE-Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL) approval of the eVinci Safety Design Strategy.
Submission also marks the completion of the Front-End Engineering and Experiment Design process that Westinghouse began in October 2023.
“The completion of the PSDR for the eVinci test reactor is an important step towards enabling a microreactor developer to perform a test in our DOME facility,” Brad Tomer, NRIC acting director, said. “As a national DOE program and part of INL, the nation’s nuclear energy research laboratory, NRIC is committed to working with private companies such as Westinghouse to perform testing and accelerate development of advanced nuclear technologies that will provide clean energy solutions for the U.S.”
The next step for the eVinci microreactor team is to develop the timeline for the end-to-end reactor test program at INL and a preliminary documented safety analyses.