PRESS RELEASE
March 6, 2024
Novel Deployment Approach will Increase Industry Standardization, Bringing SMRs Online Faster and At Lower Cost
TORONTO, CANADA – Today, as we approach the close of PDAC, the world’s premier mineral exploration and mining convention, Kinectrics, a global provider of nuclear lifecycle services, and Prodigy, a Canadian developer of marine- and land- based Transportable Nuclear Power Plants (TNPPs), announce a partnership to accelerate commercialization of Prodigy TNPPs. These key enabling technologies will help to standardize nuclear deployment practices, bringing SMRs online faster and at a lower cost, including to power remote mines.
Under the agreements in place, Kinectrics will support Prodigy’s TNPP technology development through the provision of technical services, including safety analysis, licensing, engineering, and equipment fabrication. Prodigy and Kinectrics will cooperate on global deployment of TNPPs and will see the organizations co-locate at locations in Toronto, Ontario; Saint John, New Brunswick; and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Factory-fabricated, transported to site, and removed at end of project life for decommissioning, Prodigy TNPPs will dramatically expand applications for different types and sizes of SMRs, transforming new builds from one-off projects into affordable clean energy products deliverable at commercial scale.
As promising technologies that are being developed to increase carbon-free energy security, SMRs are lauded for their simpler designs and modularity. However, even though major components of their Nuclear Steam Supply Systems can be manufactured in a factory setting, significant site construction and on-site assembly is still required.
“Larger SMRs need to present as more cost-competitive when compared to their predecessors, and microreactors need to be streamlined for fleet deployment. For the SMR industry to succeed, vendors must begin leveraging standardized deployment approaches. Prodigy TNPPs offer the first, viable technological solution to achieve precisely this – utilization will make SMR new builds more predictable, creating optimal conditions for commercial-scale, serial offtake” said David Harris, President and CEO, Kinectrics. “We are proud to partner with Prodigy to support the licensing, engineering, and project development and execution capacity needed to accelerate readiness for the first TNPP project and fleet implementation.”
To-date, efforts surrounding SMR standardization have focused primarily on harmonizing licensing, as evidenced through vehicles such as the 2022 Memorandum of Cooperation between the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But, standardizing the approaches needed for SMR deployment is quickly becoming a new imperative. Just last month, Marcel Devos, Vice President of Innovation and Regulatory Affairs at Prodigy Clean Energy, chaired a meeting at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under the Nuclear Harmonization and Standardization Initiative (NHSI) that aims to not only advance standardization of SMR regulatory approaches, but also those pertaining to SMR plant design and construction.
Typically, SMR vendors leave the design of civil structures and approaches to logistics, deployment, waste management and decommissioning until a specific site is selected. This practice can cause significant and expensive downstream engineering and re-work because the vendor then has to make the SMR “fit” the site. By leveraging bounding parameters for each phase of the facility lifecycle, Prodigy is able to solve the critical challenges from the onset, presenting a plan to vendors, operators, end-users, regulators, and the public, as to how the SMR would be transported, deployed, operated and maintained, and eventually decommissioned.
Though engineering interfacing systems between the SMR and the TNPP are customized based on the unique operating requirements of the reactor, Prodigy’s methodologies for civil structure and site-based infrastructure design; facility manufacturing, transport, and deployment; waste minimization; and facility removal and decommissioning, are being standardized.
“We are accounting for as many combinatorial postulated events and effects as possible in our TNPP deployment model, including addressing potential impacts on the facility caused over time by greater exposure to wider variations in temperature and rapidly shifting weather patterns due to climate change,” said Mathias Trojer, President and CEO, Prodigy Clean Energy. “By partnering with Kinectrics, Prodigy now has the horsepower to roll out TNPPs on an industry-wide scale – TNPPs will catalyze a disruptive step change in the way nuclear power projects are designed, planned, financed, and executed.”
Today’s announcement follows news in January about Prodigy’s collaboration with Westinghouse to develop a TNPP for remote applications integrating the Westinghouse eVinci microreactor. With Prodigy planning the first TNPP project to be focused on powering remote mines, communities and other critical Northern infrastructure in Canada, Kinectrics’ decorated history of providing trusted lifecycle services for nuclear projects internationally brings strong capabilities to bolster Prodigy’s efforts.
