Westinghouse eVinci completes zero-power criticality testing

What happened

Westinghouse’s eVinci microreactor completed cold, zero-power criticality testing at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center on the Nevada National Security Site on 24 August. The record says Los Alamos National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory were involved.

Two sources corroborate the milestone. The testing validated core-design assumptions for the eVinci programme.

Why it matters

Criticality milestones are emerging across advanced and microreactor programmes, according to the related research record. For eVinci, this is a concrete early-stage validation event and moves the project toward prototyping.

Limit and next receipt

This was zero-power, cold criticality testing rather than evidence in this record of a completed prototype or later-stage deployment. The supplied evidence does not provide further technical results, a prototyping timetable, or an operational schedule.

The next useful receipt would be a documented prototyping update from the programme that shows what follows this core-design validation.