First American Nuclear (FANCO) recently submitted its regulatory plan to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). This is the first official step toward getting their new reactor, the EAGL-1, approved for construction.

The EAGL-1 is a small modular reactor (SMR) designed to be built in factories and shipped to sites. FANCO built the EAGL-1 to comply with the government’s existing safety rules.

“FANCO designed EAGL-1 to be licensed under the NRC standards that have kept us safe for decades,” said Mike Reinboth, CEO of FANCO. “This country can’t afford to wait; we need a credible pathway to nuclear now and that is FANCO’s mission.”

A Simplified Reactor

Most nuclear plants use water to stay cool, but the EAGL-1 uses a liquid metal mix of lead and bismuth. This process simplifies the cooling process. For example, metal doesn’t need to be kept under high pressure, unlike water. It also doesn’t react with air or water the way other liquid metals (like sodium) do.

Because of these physics, the reactor is “walk-away safe.” If something goes wrong, the system cools itself down naturally without needing a person to flip a switch. A cluster of six of these small units can power about 1.5 million homes while taking up a fraction of the space.

A “Bridge” to Clean Energy

One of the biggest bottlenecks with nuclear power is how long it takes to build and get approved. FANCO has a unique way to handle this called Bridge Power.

The company builds the power-generating section of the plant, which includes the turbines and generators, first. While they wait for the nuclear reactor to get its final permits, they can run that equipment using standard gas boilers. Once the nuclear side is ready, they just swap the heat source from gas to nuclear.