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Welcome to Grid Brief! Here’s what we’re looking at today: Australia’s Sandfire produces its first copper in Botswana, Canada’s nuclear refurbishment is off to a strong start, Idaho National Labs plans to build a molten salt test reactor, and more.

Sandfire Produces First Copper in Botswana

Australian firm Sandfire Resources has produced the first copper concentrate at Motheo, its new mine in Botswana’s Kalahari Copper Belt.

Motheo has been under construction for two years. Sandfire expects to bring copper from the mine to market by the end of the year.

"The Motheo team will now focus on completing commissioning activities and ramping-up the processing plant to its initial 3.2 million tonnes per annum processing capacity, which is expected to be achieved during the September quarter of the 2024 financial year,” Sandfire Managing Director and CEO Brendan Harris said.

“The Kalahari Copper Belt, which extends for nearly 1,000km [621 miles] from northeast Botswana to western Namibia, has geological similarities to the Central African Copper Belt, which includes top continental producers Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia,” reports Reuters.

The belt is both highly promising and under-explored. Copper mining gives Botswana a chance to diversify its economy away from diamond mining.

Canadian Refurbished Reactors Near Restart

The refurbishment of Canada’s CANDU reactors is making rapid progress.

“Fuel loading has been completed at Bruce 6, keeping the project on track to resume operation later this year,” reports World Nuclear News. “Meanwhile, Canada's nuclear regulator has given the go-ahead for Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to restart Darlington 3.”

The Darlington Unit 3 refurbishment is 6 months ahead of schedule.

The refurbishment of CANDUs, Canada’s native nuclear technology, forces the country to re-establish its nuclear production supply chains. This puts Canada in a unique position to embark on new build nuclear reactors.

More specifically, it would allow Ontario to pre-empt its potential electricity supply shortfalls by building more CANDUs.

“Ontario is poised for rapid growth in electricity use without the supply to meet it. As policymakers search for solutions, a sober concern for energy security, fuel and technology independence, affordability, and emissions limit the available options,” Canadians for Nuclear Energy said in a recent report on the CANDU reactor. “In this context, attention has again turned to nuclear energy as a proven way to meet clean electricity needs without sacrificing affordability or the stability of the grid.”

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US Test Reactor to Run On Weapons-Grade Uranium

The Department of Energy plans to test a small nuclear reactor that would burn weapons-grade uranium. The experiment would supply data for a new reactor under development by TerraPower and Southern Company Services.

“The Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE) would differ dramatically from conventional power reactors. They consume uranium fuel enriched to roughly 4% uranium-235, the fissile isotope, and encased in metal rods,” reports Science. “Some uranium atoms split or fission to release energy and neutrons, which then split other uranium atoms in a chain reaction. Pressurized water flows around the rods both to slow the neutrons so that they split atoms more effectively and to carry heat to steam generators that ultimately drive turbines to generate electricity. The MCRE would instead be cooled by molten salt, into which the uranium would be dissolved.”

TerraPower’s reactor would use uranium-235 enriched as much as 19%, but Idaho National Labs’s MCRE will use fuel enriched more than 90%—enough to build dozens of bombs. But the uranium INL plans to use is left over from experiments conducted more than 30 years ago.

Molten salt reactors were first conceived in the 1940s as a way to power airplanes with nuclear energy. MSRs are highly efficient, safe reactor types. But the non-proliferation crowd worries that development of this technology would contravene half a century of precedent and open the door to rolling back the non-proliferation regime.

For more about MSRs and their attributes, click here.

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