Generation

Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and Oklo will develop crucial technologies in researching pyroprocessing for advanced fast reactor fuels. Pyroprocessing involves the use of high-temperature molten salts to enable the recycling and reuse of valuable nuclear materials from used fuel. Recycling improves the utilization of nuclear resources, generates less nuclear waste, and reduces the cost of fuel. The ANL team will develop a system to improve the safeguarding, security, and operations of future fuel reprocessing plants to support this outcome.

Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and other national laboratories and universities will develop a transformational technology for LLFP transmutation using energetic photons and protons. For instance, long-lived isotope I-129 (half-life of 15.7 million years) can be transmuted to short-lived isotope I-128 (half-life of 25 minutes). A high transmutation performance can be achieved by multiple transmutations in the arrangement of the LLFP target surrounded by an LLFP blanket.

To use EGS as an unlimited renewable energy source, Eden will develop a new class of hydraulic fracturing methods to create fluid pathways for water to be heated and extracted for power production. Eden’s new “Electro-Hydraulic Fracturing” (E-HF) technology will use electricity and water to access a more extensive fracture network for heat recovery. This E-HF process will increase the heat transfer surface area for the water circulating through fractures, improving EGS power plant efficiency up to 500%.

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) will develop a thermal treatment process for extracting metallic actinides as a group and separating active fission products from used metal fuels. The INL team will leverage the anticipated formation of immiscible (unmixable) liquid layers and subsequent precipitation of solid phases upon cooling to improve the purity of resulting products at a potentially lower cost. A traveling molten zone system will rapidly extract actinides from used metallic fuels.

Stony Brook University aims to significantly reduce compact reactor waste via improved fuel utilization and reduced uranium loading. The team’s solution is a novel microencapsulated fuel form leveraging halide salt sintering of magnesium oxide (MgO), developed under ARPA-E’s MEITNER program to enable advanced moderator technologies with enhanced neutronic performance and temperature stability as a replacement for graphite.

Rutgers University aims to develop and demonstrate PACE-FORWARD, a high-density, durable cermet waste form (WF) suitable to immobilize all forms of AR wastes, significantly reducing processing complexity. The proposed WF will exhibit high waste loading (≥70% by volume) and immobilize multiple waste streams, including metal, salt (halide), and oxides from molten salt fueled or metallic fueled reactors; or metal and carbon-14/carbide waste from reprocessing of tri-structural isotropic fuel particles.

Oklo aims to commercialize a state-of-the-art nuclear fuel recycling facility within the next few years. The facility would produce fuel for Oklo’s metal-fueled fast reactors, closing the advanced reactor fuel cycle and changing the economic paradigm for advanced fission with a commercial-scale fuel recycling facility.

Deep Isolation will develop a universal canister design compatible with waste acceptance criteria for mined and borehole repositories to support cost-effective nuclear waste disposal options and provide flexibility for a broad range of advanced fuel forms and recycling products. The conventional nuclear fuel dry storage canisters in use today will likely require repackaging or reconfiguring before disposal. Deep Isolation’s new universal canister will create an elemental waste form component that will decouple the interdependent constraints between storage, transport, and disposal.

General Electric (GE) Global Research, with Lumitron Technologies and Idaho State University, will develop an innovative active interrogation technique, Resonance Absorption Densitometry for Materials Assay Security Safeguards (RADMASS), which can penetrate advanced reactor fuel (dense solid actinides) and measure fissile mass density (<1% uncertainty) on the order of minutes or less while being insensitive to high background radiation.

Chloride salts possess different levels of volatility at high temperatures, which can be used in targeted separations. TerraPower proposes to use a chloride-based volatility (CBV) process to separate uranium from used nuclear fuel (UNF), and investigate tunable CBV parameters to achieve a high degree of uranium recovery and thereby reduce waste volumes. Work will begin with surrogate oxide and molten salt used nuclear fuels and subsequently progress to demonstration with actual oxide UNF. CBV can be applied to metallic-, oxide-, and salt-based reactor fuels.