The Office of Nuclear Energy of the US Department of Energy DOE has awarded $17m to 16 experiment and analysis projects whose publicly available data will assist the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in the licensing and regulation of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).
“Many advanced reactor developers require HALEU to achieve smaller designs, longer operating cycles, and increased efficiencies over existing technologies,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Dr Michael Goff. “The data collected from these projects will support efforts to ensure HALEU infrastructure is licensed and regulated in time for reactor demonstrations and deployments.”
The 16 projects are the first to be awarded under the DOE & NRC’s Criticality Benchmarking solicitation. They will cover five topic areas to support the development of data useful for the NRC licensing evaluation process and industry’s licensing submittals related to commercial-scale HALEU operations.
DOE says the publicly available data developed from these projects will enable efficient future design and safety reviews and help the nuclear industry develop new and novel solutions to address data gaps. The project teams span six national laboratories and include partnerships with six universities and multiple industry partners.
This joint DOE & NRC project falls under DOE’s HALEU Availability Program which supports the availability of HALEU for civilian domestic research, development, demonstration, and commercial use. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provided $700m to the HALEU Availability Program, and up to $60m is made available through this project. DOE plans to issue two more calls for criticality benchmarking proposals. The second call is planned for early 2025.
