Pump supplier SPX FLOW has been named as an official supply chain partner to TerraPower. Specifically, it has been chosen to design the primary sodium pump for TerraPower’s Travelling Wave Reactor (TWRTM), currently under development.

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Rendering of TerraPower’s Travelling Wave Reactor concept. Image courtesy TerraPower

Pump supplier SPX FLOW has been named as an official supply chain partner to TerraPower. Specifically, it has been chosen to design the primary sodium pump for TerraPower’s Travelling Wave Reactor (TWRTM), currently under development.

Once the pump design process has been completed, it is anticipated that SPX FLOW will manufacture the pumps at its Nuclear Center of Excellence in Annecy, France.

Chris Levesque, president of TerraPower (which has Bill Gates as one of its backers), said: “As we begin the TWRTM primary sodium pump project with SPX FLOW, we continue our approach to manage and reduce technical risks, component by component, to make our advanced reactor technology a reality.”

In the first phase, SPX FLOW has been commissioned to perform the conceptual design, with options to build and test a prototype pump. The pump will have to meet both the exacting quality standards associated with ASME NQA-1 and Class 1 equipment and all the functional requirements for normal operation and coping with beyond design basis events such as earthquakes.