Development of the Technical and Business Case for the Establishment of an Advanced Fuel Cycle Enterprise

Default ARPA-E Project Image

Program:
CURIE
Award:
$2,796,546
Location:
Palo Alto, California
Status:
ACTIVE
Project Term:
04/13/2023 - 04/12/2025
Website:

Technology Description:

EPRI will research an integrated fuel cycle enterprise, intended to address the coupled challenges of nuclear fuel life-cycle management and AR fuel supply. Input LWR fuel source options and process step options for recycling that produces fuel for ARs such as a molten chloride fast reactor (MCFR) will be characterized and evaluated. EPRI will use this information to develop recycling optimization tool to evaluate the many viable process options for their compatibility and efficiency. The project will research a holistic strategy to reduce the volume of light-water reactor high-level waste requiring permanent disposal by reprocessing it with efficient and evolving techniques that do not produce pure plutonium streams.

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 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:
Dr. Daniel Moneghan
Press and General Inquiries Email:
ARPA-E-Comms@hq.doe.gov
Project Contact Email:
dmoneghan@epri.com

Partners

Oak Ridge 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