Westinghouse has released that they are developing their new microreactor design for what they call the eVinci Microreactor. This generation of reactors is in the early stages of planning, where they intend on building in warehouse reactors for deployment in their facility in Etna, Pennsylvania. This microreactor aims to be small, transportable, and deployable on-site with minimal operation and over 8 years of full power runtime before the need for refueling.

The way it works is that nuclear fuel generates fuel through the typical fission of Uranium-235 (U-235). The Uranium is enriched to 19.75% U-235 which is enough to emit 15MW of heat energy. This heat is transferred through heat pipes of high thermal conductivity and can be utilized in processes as needed, or to boil water and run a turbine to produce 5MW of power.

The Benefits of the eVinci Microreactor

Westinghouse’s eVinci Microreactor is capable of delivering 5MW of electric power generation in any weather conditions. This is enough to power over 5000 homes. With a small footprint, this reactor can be made in a factory and sent on site to where it will remain in operation with little operability.

A large issue with current active reactors is that the design was for the specific application so in many cases, the manufacturer of parts is no longer around producing the exact components, leading to more expensive and less safe solutions. With this modular manufacturing model, the economy of scale for these reactors becomes much more beneficial. Now, every microreactor will be manufactured in an assembly line where mass production of pieces leads to dependability and repeatability. It also minimizes the number of unnecessary parts.

Another large benefit of this model of microreactors is that it is a very safe design as it has passive safety features that shut down the reactor utilizing natural forces of circulation for cooling and automatically ejects shut down rods when sensed and shuts down instantly without operation. The reactor also does not use a fluid to cool the reactor. Instead, it vents heat off convectively through the surrounding air which means that a spill of fluid into the environment is completely mitigated. Finally, remote operability leads to no need to start up the microreactor onsite. These safety features ensure peace of mind in facilities where these operate and the possibility of these failing catastrophically are effectively zero.

The cost benefit of this microreactor is much more attractive than the current methods of implementing nuclear power in our power grid. Westinghouse aims to make their microreactors cost around 60 million USD once full-scale production begins. This is much better than the over 10 billion USD construction now. Obviously, it produces much less power, but this lower barrier to entry makes it easier to make nuclear more commonplace in a wider range of applications.

The Potential Applications of the eVinci Microreactor

The eVinci microreactor is small enough that it can function on as little as 2-acres of land which means that it can be implemented easily into already large-scale production facilities. It also makes it easy to transport and utilize in size restricted applications.

Small footprint means that these can be useful for power generation in industrial processes such as hydrogen production or in data centers – a huge topic of note when it comes to the power consumption due to the artificial intelligence boom. These microreactors can also be deployed to natural disaster sites, military installations, and popup projects around the world.

These relatively easy to assemble, modular reactors can be manufactured and stored until ready for deployment where it can be sent to different sites in shipping containers on railways, barges, and freight trucks.

This is easy to scale up or down depending on application by lining up multiple in series and powering larger processes or heating small hydrogen plants for fuel generation in a small town. The inclusion of this design in remote locations and cities makes it a perfect option for safe operability and clean power generation. Westinghouse plans to begin deploying the eVinci microreactor in 2026.