Closing the Cycle with NuCycle™

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Program:
CURIE
Award:
$5,000,000
Location:
Washington, District Of Columbia
Status:
ACTIVE
Project Term:
03/07/2023 - 03/06/2026
Website:

Technology Description:

CurioTM will research the advanced head-end processing and fluorination steps of its UNF recycling process, NuCycleTM, at the laboratory scale to derisk the NuCycle process. NuCycle is a modular, integrated, compact, and proliferation-hardened process designed to avoid production of pure plutonium (Pu) streams and dramatically reduce waste volumes compared with existing processes. NuCycle significantly reduces facility footprints, leverages well-understood chemical processes, and accommodates a variety of fuel types, including molten salts and nitride fuels. The advanced head-end processing and fluorination steps will produce UF6 that is suitable for re-enrichment while keeping plutonium with the remaining actinides and fission products for further processing. Using safeguards-by-design principles, Curio will also design a material control and accountability system for the NuCycle facility that will enable <1% uncertainty in actinide accounting.

Potential Impact:

By enabling the secure and economical recycling of the nation’s inventory of LWR UNF, CURIE will have the following impacts:

Security:

Support the deployment of advanced reactor (AR) technologies by providing safe and sustainable domestic fuel stocks. Improvements in monitoring capabilities could enable more precise controls of various reprocessing stages while ensuring increased security of materials of concern.

Environment:

Substantially reduce the disposal impact of the nation’s inventory of LWR UNF, decrease uranium mining requirements, and support a comprehensive national strategy to store radioactive waste safely and securely.

Economy:

Complement ARPA-E’s existing nuclear energy research portfolio, further ensuring the commercial viability of innovative new ARs, and enable an additional revenue stream via valuable radionuclides recovered from UNF for diverse applications.

Contact

ARPA-E Program Director:
Dr. Jenifer Shafer
Project Contact:
Mr. Vikram Singh
Press and General Inquiries Email:
ARPA-E-Comms@hq.doe.gov
Project Contact Email:
vik@curio-solutions.com

Partners

Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Idaho National Laboratory
Sandia National Laboratory

Related Projects

• Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) - Radioisotope Capture Intensification Using Rotating Packed Bed Contactors
• Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) - Highly Efficient Electrochemical Oxide Reduction for U/TRU Recovery from LWR Fuel
• Curio Solutions - Closing the Cycle with NuCycle™
• Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) - Development of the Technical and Business Case for the Establishment of an Advanced Fuel Cycle Enterprise
• General Electric (GE) Global Research - Monochromatic Assays Yielding Enhanced Reliability (MAYER)
• Idaho National Laboratory (INL) - Development of Robust Anode Materials for the Electrochemical Recovery of Actinide Elements from the Used Nuclear Fuel
• Mainstream Engineering - Improved Volatile and Semi-volatile Radionuclide Off-Gas Management
• NuVision Engineering - Modular Power Fluidics and Online Optical Spectroscopy for Reprocessing Separation Plant Accountancy
• University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) - Group Hexavalent Actinide Separation: A Single-Step, Proliferation Resistant Approach to Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing
• University of Colorado, Boulder (CU-Boulder) - Achieving 1% Assay of Special Nuclear Materials in 2 Minutes with Microcalorimeter-Array Gamma-Ray Spectroscopy
• University of North Texas (UNT) - Self-powered Wireless Hybrid Density/Level Sensing with Differential Pressure Sensors for Safeguarding and Monitoring of Electrochemical Processing of Nuclear Spent Fuel
• University of Utah - Pyrochemical Dissolution of LWR Spent Fuel with Actinide Recovery for Advanced Reactors

Release Date:
03/15/2022