Carol Tansley on reactor plans from X-energy and Cavendish Nuclear

The gleaming ceramic orb held between the thumb and forefinger of X-energy's Carol Tansley looks for all the world like the black ball plucked from a snooker table.

It is in fact a nuclear fuel pebble, a small but vital component in a new breed of mini reactors at the leading edge of the worldwide surge into clean energy.

And if Tansley has her way this emerging technology will also transform Hartlepool, one pebble at time, into a nuclear powerhouse at the centre of a country-wide roll-out of Advanced Modular Reactors.

The town would become a hub and centre of expertise supporting the UK and overseas exports, creating hundreds of high quality production jobs and thousands more in construction and the supply chain.

X-energy and its partner Cavendish Nuclear have received £3.34m from the British Government for development of a plan which should see fruition in the form of 12 modular reactors built adjacent to the existing Hartlepool Power Station by the early 2030s.

Tansley, installed in September 2022 as X-energy's Vice President, UK New Build Projects, believes the project will not only breathe new life into the town but place it at the epicentre of a new wave of nuclear energy provision in the UK.

She said: "We intend to have a fleet of reactors in the UK; there is demand and opportunity for about 40.

"If we start at Hartlepool, it will effectively become a centre of excellence and knowledge and we can envisage a situation where the core of our operations within the UK is in the Hartlepool and Teesside area, which would retain the knowledge and develop opportunities for the next generation of people in that area.

"For example we are going to need a lot of work in the supply chain that we can use throughout the UK, we are going to need a fabrication facility for our modules. One of the benefits of all small modular reactors is the idea that they are prefabricated in a facility in some kind of warehouse and are then assembled on site.

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"There is a huge opportunity here that would mean we could have our fabrication facilities in the Teesside area which are then used for our national deployment - that's the vision we have for the Teesside area and we think with the skills and capability they have in Hartlepool that this is a realistic proposition."

So with the entire country at the disposal of this US giant, was Hartlepool always the first choice for its first UK site?

Tansley nods. "Yes, because of the workforce and skill set, the existing high temperature gas reactors, because the industrial cluster is so close to it and because of the welcoming community for nuclear.

And also, quite honestly, with everything (Tees Valley Mayor) Ben Houchen is doing in the local area, developing business opportunities, we think we can grow the energy supply at the same time as they are growing the businesses so we see a huge potential for Teesside.

"We knew there was a regeneration plan, we spoke to Ben Houchen on a number of occasions and worked with the local council and obviously it is a really exciting area to be in. We have seen from the local mayoral elections that there is a lot of trust in Ben with everything he has brought to the region and he will continue to do. We see it as a really exciting opportunity."

When it comes online the site will be the first in Britain to utilise a cluster of the new breed of small modular pebble-bed reactors, but it's a technology that is well tried and tested. It will be a UK-first, but for X-energy it will be their fifth installation.

Their first project is underway in the US on the Gulf Coast in Texas for the American chemical giant Dow.

That project is funded by the US Department of Energy through their advanced reactor demonstration programme, with $1.2bn worth of funding secured at the end of 2020.

The money will be used to complete reactor design, build the first commercial fuel fabrication facility for its TRISO-X fuel and build its first power plant project. The Government funding - as in the UK funding package - will be equalled by X-energy.

Tansley says: "We intend UK deployment will be the fifth of a kind deployment, because we will have deployed the first four for Dow and then the fifth one will be here.

"That has a lot of benefit because it means that a lot of the risks and challenges associated with first of a kind deployment, which have a track record of being very challenging within the nuclear sector, many of those challenges and risks will have been retired and we will have learnt a lot and we can bring that learning forward to the UK.

Carol Tansley (Image: Sarah Caldecott)

"If you look at the history of nuclear power plant projects, the first of a kind challenges are always very very tricky. Significant cost and schedule overruns is how most of them are characterised, but a lot of that challenge will be retired in this case.

"The project with Dow on the Gulf Coast is underway; it will be online by the end of the decade. That is a four pack of our reactors for their Seadrift facility and the reactors will be replacing the current power and steam asset which is coming towards the end of its life."

X-energy believe the Hartlepool site to be strategically important, partly due to its links with EDF's Hartlepool Power Station.

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It is already designated under current government policy for nuclear newbuild and the land planned for development is immediately adjacent to the existing power plant, which is due to come offline around March 2026 - though may get a life extension of two further years.

Without a successor in place there's every chance a skilled workforce would look elsewhere for opportunities and the supply chain would start to decline.

But with similarities in its operation to the existing one, Tansley sees a seamless transition to the new operation.

She said: "Both moderate nuclear reaction with graphite and that means there is a very skilled workforce there that understands this technology, there is renowned worldwide expertise which is called on quite often from overseas and it would be a fantastic opportunity for us and for them to utilise that workforce to give them the opportunity going forward."

The projected numbers are impressive. The 12 reactors would produce a 960 megawatt electricity output or 2,400 megawatts thermal in energy terms and would provide around £5-6bn of inward investment for Hartlepool and the local area.

Tansley says: "We see the opportunity to create hundreds of high quality, well paid jobs - permanent jobs in operations and of the order of 2,500 jobs during construction and more for the supply chain so we think this is a really transformational opportunity for the community there due to the size of the investment , the jobs and during the construction period.

"The other reason that the Hartlepool site is really attractive to us, as well as the local supply chain and workforce, is that you have got the industrial cluster right on the opposite side of the estuary.

"One of the benefits of our technology is that as well as producing clean electricity we also produce high temperature heat and steam, so the output temperature of our Xe-100 reactor is 565 degrees Celsius and that is of the order of about 200 degrees higher than some of the traditional nuclear reactors, which gives you greater versatility of end use.

"So for example the manufacture of hydrogen, synthetic aviation fuels, as well as having a direct use for the chemical industry, among others.

"In the US, Dow are going to take the high temperature heat and steam straight into their facility. It can be used for ammonia production and things like low carbon district heating.

"It has many applications and it is because of that potential that we were given the award from the US Department of Energy because they understand the potential here for energy security and decarbonisation.

There is huge potential for this technology."

I ask how the Advanced Modular Reactors actually work - a question which leads us back to the pebble and the revelation that this new wave of nuclear energy production has its heart in 50s Britain.

Tansley said: "There are no small modular reactors in operation anywhere, but our technology was actually started and developed here in the UK with the Dragon reactor at Winfrith in Dorset in the fifties and sixties. It has decades of demonstration in the UK, US , Germany, Japan, China and South Africa, so there is a lot of testing of the technology.

"It has had years of testing but is not in commercial deployment and that's what we are seeking to do now.

"It is a pebble bed reactor using pebbles which look like a snooker ball. These pebbles have thousands of kernels of uranium inside them and are encased in several layers of carbon and ceramic that makes it indestructible, so during the nuclear reaction all the waste and fission products are retained within the pebble.

"This fuel pebble cannot melt with any of the temperature scenarios that our reactors would see. It is typically the concern about a meltdown that leads to the need for a lot of the very elaborate, expensive and difficult to build safety systems that are associated with traditional reactors.

"Because this fuel forms the intrinsic safety case, we only need about a tenth of the safety systems. That makes the reactor design simpler, it makes them easier and cheaper to build and because you have a smaller footprint of the power station it means that it can be located very flexibly at the point of energy need.

"On top of that, the way our reactors are designed means they produce clean electricity as well as the high temperature heat and steam. We can produce grid-scale baseloads that are always on to keep the grid stable and we can also "load follow," which effectively means ramping energy levels up and down, so we can complement renewables to keep the grid stable. We can ramp the power up and down by about 5% per minute.

It is very flexible and versatile."

A major objective for the nuclear industry in Britain is in the production of high quality nuclear fuel.

Until relatively recently most of the country's High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALIEU) was produced in Russia, but the Government announced a £300M "UK fuels for UK reactors" scheme to encourage a home-produced alternative.

Carol Tansley (Image: Sarah Caldecott)

To help meet this demand and hit the Government's net zero targets, X-energy has plans to build a commercial fuel fabrication facility to produce its own fuel.

The nuclear giant expects that plant will be based in the north of England, with a site in the North West currently favourite, but with the North East also being considered as an option.

We are speaking the day after Rishi Sunak fired the starting pistol on the general election race and the question arises of the impact a change in Government would have on the wave of nuclear expansion anticipated in the coming years.

Tansley wouldn't be worried if it was Sir Kier Starmer addressing the nation from Downing Street come the morning of July 5th.

She said: "One thing we're really happy about is that nuclear now has cross party support. The Labour party has committed to a programme of nuclear new build as well, large and small scale, and are very supportive of what is happening in the nuclear sector.

"They are trying to establish the Great British Energy concept and nuclear is a very important platform for their energy policy. Of course we may see a little bit of a slowdown in decision making during the election period, but we don't see any disruption, we see a continuity.

"I think everyone has realised what a critical part nuclear plays in the battle against climate change. (Energy Minister) Andrew Bowie is often heard to say there is no net zero without nuclear and I think that is absolutely true and that has broad support now.

"We are also finding the younger generation are incredibly supportive of nuclear. They understand the intrinsic safety, they understand the benefits of it, the fact there is no carbon emissions and the criticality of it in helping with our environmental challenges."

Part of X-energy's use for the award made under the Future Nuclear Enabling Fund has been to commission Teesside University to carry out a full socio-economic assessment of the benefits and impacts of a multi billion pound X-energy project on Teesside and beyond that, for the rest of the UK.

The multi-disciplinary study will include a review of available socio economic data and engagement with local stakeholders including government officials, community leaders and sector experts.

The study will also examine national impacts, including the additional benefits from industrial decarbonisation applications and the manufacture of other clean energy products like hydrogen and aviation fuel.

Tansley said: "We think Teesside University has a lot of capability and a lot of extensive expertise in this area and we wanted to partner with them because we are so focused on a project in Hartlepool and wider supply chain in Teesside. We are excited to be partnering with them."

Throughout the conversation, Tansley's passion for the project is obvious, so it comes as a surprise to find she only entered the industry - or became 'a Nuke' as she laughingly terms it - 10 years ago.

Originally from Leeds, but with strong ties to the North East, she studied business and languages at Aston Business School and after graduating took up her first job at British Stainless Steel in Sheffield. "I wanted to go into industry and found it hugely exciting," she says.

She then joined a major management consultancy working across different sectors, which led to her working in central government on "some of the most challenging projects of the era. " These included the implementation of Jobseeker's Allowance and Incapacity Benefit.

She then moved to the HMRC in Newcastle, working on the National Insurance Recording System 2, before becoming an independent consultant at the Department for Work and Pensions for six years.

A stint with PricewaterhouseCoopers working in central government practice led to an opportunity to go to work in the Middle East on a project in Abu Dhabi for the Minister of the Interior, involving police, defence borders and prisons. She says: "I was only meant to be there for a year but I felt I had only just got to grips with how to make things happen in a different culture. I didn't want to come home."

She stayed to oversee a programme in Saudi Arabia for the Ministry of Labour examining training for younger people in Saudi and how to get them into employment in the public and private sector.

And only after that, in September 2014, did the nuclear industry come knocking in the shape of the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant project in the UAE.

She became its Strategic Programmes Director and part of that role was to set up Nawah, the operating arm of the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation.

She said: "In 2018 I was asked to help lead a schedule reset to get the first unit online and I then set up and led the operational readiness control centre, which was the main government programme body driving the delivery of the unit. Happily I managed to get the first unit online two days ahead of schedule in 2020."

As the pandemic struck she was making good use of her time, beginning a Masters degree at the University of Oxford in September 2020 in what she calls her greatest passion - major programme management.

Whilst researching her dissertation looking at collaborative projects and programme management methodologies she interviewed an executive which led to being offered her current role with X-energy, based in Maryland and established by Kam Ghaffarian.

The Iranian-born millionaire is credited by Forbes as "the man who got NASA back to the moon," a reference to his building the first private lander to make it intact to the moon's surface.

Tansley relishes the chance to bring his nuclear vision to Hartlepool, saying: "We just can't wait to get started."