Moltex Energy Canada has entered into a Service Level Agreement with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) in relationship to the development of its WAste To Stable Salt (WATSS) process. This is despite the fact that earlier in April parent company Moltex Energy was placed into administration. Administrators Azets is looking to secure a sale of the company and its assets. According to Azets, subsidiaries – Moltex Energy Canada and MoltexFLEX are continuing to trade as usual.
The agreement with CNSC lays out a framework for engagement and discussions with the regulator to receive feedback on key topical areas such as safety, security and safeguards, to ensure that regulatory requirements are suitably taken into account at every stage of the development.
This framework will allow the CNSC to facilitate engagement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to ensure that the WATSS facility and associated fuel cycle will be compatible with the application of international obligations under the Treaty on the non-proliferations of nuclear weapons, and ensure best practices are incorporated into the design as early as possible.
Moltex recently validated the WATSS process with used Candu fuel at the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, and is now progressing with the engineering design and safety analysis of the commercial facility.
“We appreciate the opportunity to get early feedback on the design from the CNSC to ensure we are designing a facility that meets the highest standards,” said Olivier Gregoire, Moltex Licensing Manager. “Early engagement minimises the risk of late-stage additions to the design which can create needless cost increases. This engagement will streamline site specific licensing.”
Moltex is developing nuclear technologies including the Stable Salt Reactor – Wasteburner (SSR-W) which uses recycled nuclear waste as fuel; a Waste To Stable Salt (WATSS) process for recycling nuclear waste to produce new fuel; and GridReserve thermal energy storage tanks, which enable the SSR-W to act as a peaking plant.
Moltex Energy Canada is one of two vendors partnered with New Brunswick Power to build reactors at Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station. Moltex Canada proposed its SSR-W. The second company, ARC Clean Technology, is working on the ARC-100. Both were expected to be ready by 2030 but have struggled to raise funds privately.
Moltex’s British holding company was founded in 2014. According to its latest financial report, published in January, it employed two people during the year ended 31 March 2024, and lost £630,000 ($1.1m). For several years its reports raised uncertainty about its ability to continue as a going concern, according to Canada’s Globe & Mail.
According to Moltex Energy’s financial statements, its shareholders had provided its equity throughout its history; it carried no long-term debt. The company reported in 2023 that its future depended on raising external capital; it had enough cash flow to survive through December 2025, albeit “there would need to be cuts”.
Moltex Energy Canada CEO Rory O’Sullivan was also a director of the parent company for much of the past several years. According to the Globe & Mail, he said the UK company’s shareholders would not approve the Canadian subsidiary’s fundraising efforts, effectively stalling them. “The key here is we needed to get someone else in control of Moltex Energy Ltd so that we could have a competitive sale process,” he noted. “And the administration process allowed us to do that. … Really, we are just excited to get new owners in place and get back to business.”
Last month, Moltex announced it had “successfully validated” its fuel reprocessing technology through experiments on used fuel bundles from one of Canada’s Candu reactors. O’Sullivan said both the SSR-W reactor and the fuel reprocessing process have completed a “proof-of-concept” phase. “The next stage is preliminary engineering of both, and that’s a much bigger dollar value,” he added.
As for ARC, its CEO and other employees suddenly departed last summer, and ARC has published no announcements on its website since then. The ARC-100 is undergoing a prelicensing review by CNSC. Spokesperson Sandra Donnelly said the company will complete its design by 2027 to support an application for a construction licence.
NB Power spokesperson Dominique Couture said in a statement that NB Power has been working on an environmental impact assessment for the ARC-100 during the past year. It also assisted Moltex’s development efforts for reprocessing spent fuel.
The Canadian government’s 2018 SMR Roadmap promised demonstration projects across the country and successive federal budgets allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to support them. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories was to have a Micro Modular Reactor up operating at its Chalk River facility by 2026. However, developer Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp initiated a court-supervised sale process under US Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in October and another partner, Ontario Power Generation, pulled out in 2024.
Of the demonstration projects contemplated in the SMR Roadmap, only Ontario Power Generation’s proposal to build a “grid-scale” SMR at its Darlington Station is progressing. This month it received a construction licence from the CNSC to build its first reactor, a BWRX-300 designed by GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy. It is scheduled for completion by 2028.
