Economic acceptance of the ALMR

The advanced liquid-metal reactor (ALMR) is the current U.S. plant concept in a long line of liquid-metal-cooled, fast reactor approaches. Past liquid-metal reactor (LMR) designs have been projected to be only marginally competitive with light water reactors (LWRS) unless a significant increase occurs in the price of yellow cake. The past LMRS, however, have followed the basic design approaches of LWRS, i.e., large-capacity plants with multiple active safety systems and their nuclear steam supply systems (NSSS) were generally found to be higher in capital costs than LWRS. The ALMR was conceived as a new approach to LMR design with the promise of being more economically acceptable to U.S. utilities. This new design addressed not only the historically high cost of LMRs but the reasons for the rapid escalation of capital costs experienced with the construction of LWRs