The major concerns with TRL/7 will be:
- multi months operation without failures on one serial cascade (not parallel cascades to achieve required throughput)
- demonstration of laser/optics lifetime
- Demonstration that NRC safety requirements can be achieved
- energy economics are demonstrated in the opex
- capex advantage is demonstrated in a single serial cascade
The money men (government and/or banks/shareholders) will need "comfort" to have sufficient confidence to shell out ~US$2Bn to build the PLEF for LEU. In this context we may need to just develop the tails plant first (TRL/8) before we can raise the finance for the LEU plant - may take longer than 2030 for LEU but hopefully we will have an NRC licence to expand into LEU once the tails plant is proven to TRL/8. At least we will not need a Cat 2 license for 8% LEU+ but if GM (next door) gets it should be easier for us to do the same (even if they are centrifuge)
The major concerns with TRL/7 will be:- multi months operation...
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