Southern Company and the Department of Energy have announced an agreement to demonstrate the world's first fast-spectrum salt reactor in collaboration with TerraPower and a host of other participants at Idaho National Laboratory. The Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE) is expected to provide crucial operational data for fast-spectrum salt reactors to enable the use of the technology in a net-zero future and will be supported by a five-year, $170 million cost-shared funding agreement. The cooperative agreement announced November 18 will advance TerraPower's Molten Chloride Fast Reactor (MCFR) design. Southern Company will lead the collaborative effort between TerraPower, INL, Core Power, Orano Federal Services, the Electric Power Research Institute, and 3M Company. Southern's MCRE was announced as one of five Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program Risk Reduction Awards in December 2020. With Southern's announced commitment to build the MCRE, at least four of the DOE's ARDP awardees featuring four different coolants-helium (X-energy), sodium (TerraPower), fluoride salt (Kairos Power), and chloride salt (Southern, with TerraPower)-have announced a site and a commitment to build either a full-size demo reactor or a scaled-down experimental reactor.
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