Will large French factories soon have their own nuclear power plants? The French start-up Jimmy officially submitted an authorization request for its small modular reactor on Monday April 29. The objective is to supply heat to the industrial complex of the Cristal Union / Cristanol sugar group, which produces alcohol and bioethanol in Bazancourt (Marne). These new players are taking advantage of government incentives to develop the sector, as part of the France 2030 program.
1 How does this small nuclear reactor work?
The role of this small modular reactor (PRM) will be to provide heat in the form of steam, around 450°C, replacing the plant’s current burners, which operate on gas. This PRM is notably composed of a high temperature reactor, in which nuclear fission takes place. “This is a completely different technology from the reactors in the current fleet”explains Sébastien Israel, head of the new reactor department at the Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN). “The fuel is so-called ‘triso’ particles: uranium oxide coated with three layers of material, which constitute beads of the order of a millimeter.” These are placed in graphite blocks. The helium present in the circulators conducts the heat to an exchanger, to which the plant is connected.
This 20 meter high cube will be installed directly on the industrial customer’s site. The Jimmy group ensures that its equipment has a life expectancy of twenty years, requiring recharging after ten years, and that each of the reactors helps avoid releasing up to 350,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. In the case of the Cristanol plant in Bazancourt, the power of the PRM would be 10 megawatts, 430 times less than the power expected for the Flamanville EPR.
2 What do we know about the French start-up Jimmy?
Jimmy Energy is a young start-up founded in 2020 by a polytechnician, Antoine Guyot, and an HEC graduate, Mathilde Grivet. It is one of eleven “innovative nuclear reactor” projects which have received state aid as part of the France 2030 program. As such, Jimmy had benefited from 32 million euros, out of the 130 million allocated in this shutter. It also attracted around twenty million euros of private investment. These modules must be assembled on the Creusot site (Saône-et-Loire), where the group’s industrial platform is located. Jimmy submitted an authorization request last month to build his future assembly workshop there.
3 How do these reactors represent a technological challenge?
Fuel still represents an industrial challenge. “Large reactors use uranium fuel rods enriched to 3% or 4%, for which there are many producers, including the French Orano” (ex-Areva), notes Ludovic Dupin, information director of the French Nuclear Energy Company (Sfen). “But here, it is about producing more enriched fuels, at 20%, and in different forms”. Which will require the future creation of supply chains.
The IRSN will notably intervene on the technical expertise of the preliminary safety report, the regulatory timetable providing up to three years for the creation authorization. “We will have to have guarantees on the fuel, which is not currently used in France”, explains Sébastien Israel, from IRSN. These “triso” particles have already been manufactured in the country, but only for research and development purposes. “We will emphasize its quality and the good behavior of this fuel, which is one of the cornerstones of the safety demonstration of this type of reactor, including in the event of an accident”underlines the IRSN framework.
4 What will become of the waste produced by these nuclear reactors?
According to Ludovic Dupin, these fourth generation reactors are intended to reduce the quantity of nuclear waste, by recovering more material than current technologies. This waste will, in any case, follow the classic circuit: geological storage for high-level waste and surface storage for low-level waste. It remains to be seen how these small units will be monitored on a daily basis, concedes the member of the French Nuclear Energy Society. “The issue of teleoperability of small reactors is an issue that will need to be addressed in the years to come.”
5 What is the benefit of these small reactors for French industry?
When we think of nuclear power, we immediately think of electricity production. But these small reactors will bring “new uses to decarbonize the economywants to believe Ludovic Dupin. We don’t talk much about heat production, even though it is a big energy transition issue for industry.” Chemistry, steel, glass, cement… The government signed contracts last year with the fifty industrial sites emitting the most CO2, so that they reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030.
6 When could this mini-reactor start running?
The file was submitted on Monday to the Ministry of Ecological Transition, which will then have to refer the matter to the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN). Contacted by AFP, the ministry confirmed receipt of this request. “The Safety Authority is awaiting referral to the ministry”, replied the ASN, whose investigation work could take at least three years. Jimmy, for his part, aims to deliver a first reactor in 2026. While conceding that “this timetable is considered ambitious by the ASN”she states that “deadlines confirmed by suppliers and recent progress in launching the instruction make it feasible.”
7 Are other companies planning to build mini-reactors?
Until now, recalls AFP, the Nuclear Safety Authority only dealt with four historical operators: EDF, Orano, Framatome and Andra, the waste agency. But more and more players are positioning themselves in the PRM niche. ASN is currently monitoring ten projects. She believes that the most mature are the light water reactors, and in particular the Nuward prototype, carried by the EDF group, or the Calogena boiler. Sodium reactors, then high temperature reactors – like Jimmy – are at an intermediate stage.
“All players do not have the same level of resources and the same means, they are not all at the same stage of development”, underlines Sébastien Israel, from the IRSN side. Ludovic Dupin prefers to emphasize the seriousness of the projects under study. “That’s not to say that going to industrial scale will work for all of them, but it’s based on solid science.”
