Industrialisation set-up for the production of rps for space missions - expro plus

The National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) in the UK, has demonstrated a unique capability to harvest 241-Americium from the UK's civil separated Plutonium inventory. In November 2022, NNL signed a contract for the UK Space Agency (UKSA) to develop a new facility at Sellafield site (known as PuMA-2), where241-Americium will be extracted to power full-scale RPS.A dedicated facility is needed to accept the 241-Americium oxide powder feed of 0,5 kg per year produced within PuMA-2 and to process it into pellets contained as sealed sources which will be stored and ultimately integrated in the RPS to be embarked on the space missions. In the frame of this activity, it is assumed that all these elements (pellet, cladding, welding, aeroshell...) are fully developed.The following tasks shall executed: Define the industrial set-up needs and requirements for the RPS recurrent production at each critical stage (in particular for the pellet production, the clad welding for the sealed source production and its assembly in the aeroshell), including the key ancillary processes (storage, waste route...). Identify all stakeholders (supply chain, holders of the nuclear site licences, regulatory bodies...) and existing or planned industrial assets, including their limitations, to generate optimized RPS production scarios. Provide for all the proposed facilities, an estimate of the cost, schedule, and programmatic/legal challenges for the development, construction, and operation of each production stage. Propose application cases including, but not limited to, stakeholder's responsibilities and liabilities and contractual mechanisms. Provide alternatives and options following the proposed sourcing of the nuclear material.