Washington DC – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced a $38 million investment in 12 projects that will work to mitigate the impact of spent nuclear fuel (UNF) disposal in light water reactors. Led by universities, private companies and national laboratories, these projects will facilitate the recycling of UNF, reduce the amount of high-level waste requiring permanent disposal, and secure domestic advanced reactor fuel stocks. was selected to develop the technology to deliver. Nuclear energy produces nearly one-fifth of America’s electricity and accounts for half of all clean energy generation in the country. Spent nuclear fuel, sometimes called spent nuclear fuel, is produced in the process of producing nuclear energy, but the clean energy produced from this fuel is enough to power over 70 million homes. In addition, UNF can be recycled to create new fuels and by-products that support the deployment of nuclear energy, furthering President Biden’s goals to help combat climate change and fossil energy through the widespread use of clean energy. Domestic dependence can be offset.
“In order for the United States to take greater advantage of the safe, reliable and clean energy produced at nuclear facilities across the country, the Biden-Harris Administration and the DOE recognize the importance of developing practical uses for U.S. spent nuclear fuel. aware of gender. U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm“Recycling nuclear waste for clean energy generation can significantly reduce the amount of spent fuel in nuclear facilities and increase the economic stability of the communities that lead this important work.” .”
Upon exiting the reactor, UNF is initially stored in a steel-lined concrete pool surrounded by water. It is later removed from the pool and placed in a dry storage cask with a protective shield. Most of the country’s spent fuel is safely and securely stored at more than 70 nuclear reactor sites across the country. Funded through the UNF Transforming Radioactive Isotopes into Energy (CURIE) programme, the project will enable safe and economical recycling of the country’s UNF, reducing the amount of waste requiring permanent disposal, heat load , and significantly reduce radiotoxicity. These efforts will also provide valuable sustainable fuel feedstock for advanced nuclear reactors.
The next team, led by the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), will develop isolation technologies that will improve diffusion resistance and protection technology for fuel recycling facilities, and will conduct system design studies to support fuel recycling. selected to implement.
- Argonne National Laboratory (Remont, IL) Develop a highly efficient process to convert 97% of UNF oxide fuels to metal using stable next-generation anode materials. (Amount awarded: $4,900,000)
- Argonne National Laboratory (Remont, IL) Develop, manufacture and test a series of compact rotating packed bed contactors for spent nuclear fuel reprocessing. (Prizes: $1,520,000)
- Curio (Washington DC) Develop and demonstrate procedures for the team’s UNF recycling process (known as NuCycle) at lab scale. (Prizes: $5,000,000)
- EPRI (Charlotte, North Carolina) develops recycling tools aimed at addressing the combined challenges of nuclear fuel lifecycle management and advanced reactor fueling. (Prizes: $2,796,545)
- GE Research (Niskayuna, NY) Develop innovative safeguard solutions for aqueous reprocessing plants. (Prizes: $6,449,997)
- Idaho National Laboratory (Idaho Falls, Idaho) Design, manufacture, and test anode materials for the electrochemical reduction of actinides and fission product oxides in UNF. (Prizes: $2,659,677)
- Mainstream Engineering (Rockledge, Fla.) develops a vacuum swing separation technique that separates and captures volatile radionuclides. This reduces lifecycle capital and operating costs and minimizes the waste that needs to be stored. (Prizes: $1,580,774)
- NuVision Engineering (Mooresville, NC) Design, build and commission an integrated material accountability testing platform that predicts post-processing nuclear material accountability at an aqueous reprocessing plant with less than 1% uncertainty. (Prizes: $4,715,163)
- University of Alabama at Birmingham (Birmingham, Alabama) Develop a single-step process to recycle UNF by recovering large amounts of uranium and other transuraniums from UNF after dissolution in nitric acid. (Prizes: $1,844,998)
- University of Colorado Boulder (Boulder, Colorado) It advances a technique that enables highly accurate and significantly faster measurements of complex UNF mixtures. (Prizes: $1,994,663)
- University of North Texas (Denton, TX) To enable precise protection and monitoring of UNF electrochemical processing, we develop a self-powered wireless sensor for long-term real-time monitoring of hot molten salt density and level. (Prizes: $2,711,342)
- University of Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah) We will develop thermochemical processes for efficient conversion of UNF into fuel feedstocks suitable for sodium-cooled fast reactors or molten salt fuel reactors. (Prizes: $1,454,074)
Learn more about projects selected as part of the CURIE program and additional programs within ARPA-E that support nuclear energy deployments, including MEITNER, GEMINA and ONWARDS.
