US start-up First American Nuclear (FANCO) has announced plans to establish Indiana as the company’s headquarters, manufacturing facilities, and an energy park. The energy park is designed to be the first to operate in a “closed-fuel cycle” in US history, meaning it will reprocess and reuse used nuclear fuel on-site. FANCO’s EAGL-1 240 MWe small modular reactor (SMR) design is for a lead-bismuth-cooled fast reactor.
FANCO says the EAGL-1 design will be manufactured and assembled with existing factory infrastructure and US supply chains, driving further savings.
FANCO is also proposing a scheme to transform existing coal plants to natural gas and, ultimately, to nuclear power using the same workforce and minimal changes to equipment. “This provides immediate gas power to meet near-term needs while simultaneously fast-tracking a seamless and cost-effective transition to nuclear. Consumers get reliability without higher bills, and the State of Indiana attracts industry with access to an abundant, scalable energy supply,” FANCO says.
In addition to tapping into Indiana’s existing workforce, FANCO will develop a comprehensive programme to attract and retain talent through partnerships with Indiana’s technical colleges and universities, including tailored curricula, certifications, and apprenticeships. The programme “will build a pipeline of highly skilled local workers to support the manufacturing and operations of EAGL-1 nuclear components, and the deployment of these systems across the United States and around the world”.
According to FANCO, the EAGL-1 design “is the only nuclear reactor in the US cooled by lead-bismuth, a liquid metal alloy that has been used in the most successful nuclear systems abroad for decades”. In addition to “a simplified design that requires 30% less hardware than other SMRs without sacrificing power, lead bismuth enables EAGL-1 to operate in a closed-fuel system”.
FANCO CEO Mike Reinbot said that electricity supply using gas will begin in 2028, and the launch of the liquid metal reactor is planned for 2032. The project is focused on providing energy to data centres. According to Reinbot, the company is considering six potential sites in Indiana, with investments estimated at $4.2bn. FANCO claims that, in the future, the reactors will be able to power more than 1.5m homes.
According to the FANCO website, the company’s team “supported some of the most advanced reactor projects in US history and abroad, from liquid-metal fast reactors to next-generation fuel cycle systems”. In collaboration with the Department of Energy and national labs such as Pacific Northwest, Idaho, and Argonne, “this team helped shape the design and testing of sodium-cooled and fast-spectrum reactors”.
The team’s track record “spans the Fast Flux Test Facility, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, the Advanced Reactor Concepts programme, and early studies for the Versatile Test Reactor”.
FANCO claims: “With EAGL-1, we’re translating that experience into a commercially ready solution: a modular, safer, factory-built fast reactor paired with integrated natural gas and nuclear systems. This means we can deliver clean, affordable, and consistent baseload power at the speed the future demands, with passive safety, higher fuel efficiency, and the ability to recycle its own fuel.”
The website notes: “Using safe and benign lead-bismuth coolant, EAGL-1 takes packaged power plant systems and combines them with a compact low-pressure fast reactor design”…. The streamlined design of EAGL-1 eliminates the need for costly intermediary systems and containment vessels and reduces mechanical complexity while improving overall system reliability. Truly factory fabricated, assembled, and tested and ready to deploy today with the proprietary GNIS – Gas to Nuclear Integration System.”
EAGL-1 is “designed by a team that has worked on dozens of commercial LWRs and nearly every US fast reactor project from FFTF [Fast Flux Test Facility] to VTR [Versatile Test Reactor]. EAGL-1 isn’t a lab concept. It’s the product of decades of real-world nuclear operations and design.”
However, the world’s only operating lead-bismuth-cooled fast reactors were developed in the 1960s by the Soviet Union. These reactors powered the Alfa-class submarines, which were operational from the 1960s until the 1990s. Use of the reactors was discontinued because of issues such as lead bismuth solidification, corrosion, and the generation of polonium-210. They were decidedly not “benign”.
As to US experience with fast reactors, was discontinued in the mid-1990s. The EBR-II (Experimental Breeder Reactor-II) was a sodium-cooled fast reactor that operated from 1964 to 1994 at Argonne National Laboratory. The FFTF operated from 1982 to 1992 to test various aspects of commercial reactor design and operation. It was also cooled using liquid sodium, not lead-bismuth. The VTR was a planned DOE project to build a high-flux, fast-neutron test reactor but the project’s funding was cancelled.
The development of a lead-bismuth-cooled fast reactor will require the development of special metals and materials to overcome the problems encountered by the Alpha submarines. Moreover, bismuth is not widely available. Global production is dominated by a few countries, primarily China, which refines most of the world’s bismuth. Other countries have largely ceased their own refining operations. The planned launch of EAGL-1 by 2032 seems over-optimistic, given that it is currently in the conceptual design stage.
