ScienceDaily— With a proposed fiscal year 2009 budget of $20 million, the effort by the Department of Energy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and partners to develop grid-appropriate reactors is gaining steam.

Grid-appropriate reactors are typically between 250 megawatts and 500 megawatts, making them far more affordable and practical for developing nations than the typical 1,300-megawatt commercial light-water reactor. This is in part because these nations have smaller power grids and less well-developed technical infrastructures.


"These reactors hold the promise of economic development because they are projected to be able to be built in just a little more than half the time required to build a large power plant," said ORNL's Dan Ingersoll, a member of the Nuclear Technology Programs Office and Global Nuclear Energy Partnership national campaign director.

With a staggered build strategy, two or more reactors can be built in a series, which minimizes cash outlay and provides for quicker return on investment. Many nations have entered the nuclear age using reactors of this size range, Ingersoll noted, and the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership sees this as a strength to build on as it works to facilitate the global expansion of nuclear energy.