Russia's Akme-engineering, joint venture between state nuclear corporation Rosatom and private company Irkutskenergo (controlled by En+ Group), has received a patent from the USA for its SVBR-100 nuclear reactor trademark.
The company said it wants to protect its intellectual property as it prepares to construct a prototype SVBR-100 unit at Dimitrovgrad in the Ulyanovsk region. The trademark has already been registered in the European Union, South Korea and China and the company holds 18 patents related to the project in Russia.
The SVBR-100 nuclear project is a lead-bismuth cooled small, modular, fast-neutron reactor using with a net power output of 100MWe. The prototype is scheduled to start operating in 2019.
In February, Akme-engineering obtained a site licence for pilot commercial power unit with SVBR-100 reactor on the site of the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region. The licence is effective until February 2020.
For designs developed on technological platforms, which were not previously used in the civil nuclear power, a site licence issued by the regulatory authorities means acceptance of the design in terms safety and its conformance with requirements of federal standards and rules, and other regulatory documents in nuclear power. The next stage will be development and submission to regulator Rostechnadzor a set of documents for obtaining a construction licence.
In 2014, the SVBR-100 project was removed from the Federal Target Programme "Nuclear power technologies of the new generation in 2010-2015 and until 2020," and further development and construction will be without federal budget funds.
