AMS Corporation has been awarded a nuclear energy (NE) voucher under the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) initiative, which aims to provide advanced nuclear technology innovators with access to the facilities and expertise available across the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory complex. DOE established GAIN to provide the nuclear community with the technical, regulatory, and financial support necessary to move innovative nuclear energy technologies toward commercialization, while ensuring the continued safe, reliable, and economic operation of the existing nuclear fleet. This is the second GAIN voucher AMS has received over the past two years. AMS was selected as one of only two companies to receive an award during this round of awards for its proposal “Testing of Instrumentation and Control (I&C) Sensors and Cables for Small Module Reactors (SMRs)”.
With this GAIN NE voucher, AMS will conduct specialized testing of nuclear power plant I&C sensor and cable component samples at the nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to verify performance for time-sensitive and safety-related measurements in next-generation SMRs. The data and information collected from this effort will enable AMS to provide valuable technical guidance to SMR designers on sensor performance and cable derating. Furthermore, the results of this research will lead to the development of more efficient, stream-lined testing technologies and services and to the successful deployment of the first U.S.–based SMR by the mid-2020s.