The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has issued a white paper extolling the advances of Transatomic Power's (TAP) molten salt reactor, which burns uranium dissolved in molten fluoride salt and uses passive safety features that makes a melt down impossible.

The paper was released in late January, the company said. It was produced not long after the one-year anniversary of the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) initiative, which was announced in November 2015 as an effort to kick start public-private partnerships between the national lab and private technology firms.

The TAP design, “generates clean, passively safe and low-cost nuclear power from the existing low-enriched uranium supply chain, something that few, if any, other advanced nuclear designs can claim,” said the laboratory's technical white paper, reported the Nuclear Energy Institute.

In June 2016, Transatomic Power was among the first awardees under a “voucher” pilot program, in which private companies are given $200,000 in work-in-kind funding from the Department of Energy to perform cooperative R&D work with national labs.

One goal of the design review was to verify the advanced designs capacity for using fuel “in such a way that it breaks down long-lived radioactive byproducts known as actinides,” the NEI said.

The ORNL paper confirms the design “can operate for decades” using 5 percent-enriched uranium. Further, the design “operates at atmospheric pressures … and does not need external power to shut down and cool the fuel safely” said the NEI. With these features, TAPS design “cannot experience fuel melt down,” said the organization.

Deputy Director of the GAIN initiative Dr. Doug Crawford said the outcome of the research demonstrated the importance for combining innovation in the private sector through public-private partnerships. “In addition to TAP, GAIN is supporting several other private firms through collaboration with national labs on ground-breaking research to develop advanced nuclear technologies,” he said.

“Many R&D staff at national labs are accustomed to working on DOE projects that are led by laboratory initiative. It is a different matter to support a project initiated by someone outside a national lab, so it is important for us to learn and demonstrate how we can support private developers in a valuable way.”

“This is just the first step in what we hope will be a long, productive engagement with the national lab system,” said TAP Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Dr. Leslie Dewan. “The labs possess capabilities that are critical to helping small businesses develop state-of-the-art technologies, and GAIN is key to unlocking the potential that these technologies present,” she said.

TAP which is based in Cambridge, Mass, was founded in 2011 by Dewan and Chief Technology Officer Mark Massie. The company’s research and development (R&D) has largely been funded via private venture capital sources, including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and others. Transatomic’s chairman is Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ray Rothrock.

The ORNL's white paper memorandum is titled “Two-Dimensional Neutronic and Fuel Cycle Analysis of the Transatomic Power Molten Salt Reactor.”