Center for Advanced Small Modular and Micro Reactors

Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station

Our mission is to develop advanced technologies enabling deployment of safer, sustainable, and clean nuclear energy.

Our Goals

In fulfilling this mission, the Center for Advanced Small Modular and Microreactors (CASMR) will pursue the following goals:

  • Support transformative research ideas that hasten the development and deployment of advanced nuclear technologies, materials, and methods. CASMR innovators will work to create practical solutions that can also advance other industrial sectors, including space, manufacturing, emergency response and defense.
  • Maintain strong and sustained partnerships with domestic advanced‑reactor vendors as well as nuclear supply chain companies, to encourage relevance of CASMR research and development programs to private‑sector needs for advanced reactor deployment.
  • Provide support to government agencies that promote and fund the development of the State, National, and International nuclear workforce.

Core Competencies

  • Nuclear Reactor Engineering Research and Development

    Conducting ground-breaking research into the operation and safety of advanced nuclear reactors and reactor components in both normal and off-normal operating conditions. Developing new technologies addressing safety and operational challenges.

  • Nuclear Engineering Test Beds

    Developing, constructing, and operating test beds to assess the effective operations of candidate technologies for a variety of advanced nuclear reactor types. These test beds are used to address component behavior in various fluid flow and neutron irradiation regimes.

  • Training and Education

    Providing advanced reactor training facilities to familiarize Texas, national and international personnel with the requirements for safe operations of advanced reactors for electricity production, process heat and other applications. Advanced reactor simulators are key to this competency.

  • Supporting Global Nuclear Energy Outreach

    Supporting U.S. Departments of State, Energy, and Commerce efforts to assist countries in effective nuclear reactor deployment decision making, focusing on workforce development needs.Supporting the efforts of U.S. small and micro reactor vendors in deploying reactors domestically and internationally.

Collaboration

The Center for Advanced Small Modular and Microreactors is a Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) center. We are well-positioned to conduct research that furthers advanced nuclear reactors’ design, construction and operation. 

Building upon TEES’ vast innovation capabilities, the CASMR supports work across the technology development spectrum. The spectrum ranges from basic materials research to reactor design, manufacturing and deployment. 

We join a diverse group of domestic and international industry and government organizations and laboratories to collaborate on nuclear energy initiatives. Thus, our research aligns with the most pressing needs for decarbonizing the power sector and the broader energy system. 

By encouraging industry engagement, the center serves as an integrated solutions platform. We will enable applied research with an awareness of the practical and market barriers that must be tackled to move technologies from lab to market.

The CASMR will pursue and support new approaches for multidisciplinary nuclear research and development, education and external partnerships. 

Our approaches cross departmental and college boundaries. They address all facets of the energy landscape that connect engineering, sciences, technologies, economics, law and policy decisions. 

The center’s interdisciplinary research program will focus on the nuclear energy of small modular reactors and microreactor technologies important to industry, national laboratories, the Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 

Our engagement with energy end-users will lead to solutions for the use of nuclear-generated energy (heat) from small modular reactors and microreactors. These solutions will meet energy needs for the hydrogen economy, water desalination by nuclear power, and chemical heat processes..

Small modular and micro reactors consist of related technologies and applications of nuclear science, industrial processes, education and training, energy systems, space exploration, and defense.

Research Areas and Applications

LIGHT WATER REACTORS

  • Gen-II and Gen-III/III+ reactor designs
  • Boiling and condensation
  • Light water reactor accident analysis
  • Light water reactor fuel bundles


ADVANCED REACTORS

  • Liquid metal fast reactors
  • Gas-cooled fast reactors
  • Molten salt reactors
  • Small modular reactors
  • Micro modular reactors
  • Heat pipe reactors


GENERATION IV REACTORS

  • Pebble bed and graphite block type reactor
  • Passive heat removal systems
  • Containment response
  • Natural circulation

OTHER APPLICATIONS

  • Heat and mass transfer
  • Single-phase and multiphase flows
  • Single-phase and two-phase jets
  • Supersonic jet
  • Integrated energy systems


STATE-OF-THE-ART INSTRUMENTATION

  • Optical fiber sensors
  • Thermal imaging
  • Laser-based flow visualization
  • Schlieren and shadowgraphy imaging
  • X-ray tomography
  • Chemical analyses
  • Gas composition