Nuclear

DOE funds projects to cut impacts of used nuclear fuel disposal

Funded projects are expected to enable secure, economical recycling of used nuclear fuel and substantially reduce the volume, heat load, and radiotoxicity of waste.
DOE funds projects to cut impacts of used nuclear fuel disposal
(Nuclear spent fuel storage photo from Flickr. )

The Department of Energy announced $38 million for a dozen projects that will work to reduce the impacts of light-water reactor used nuclear fuel (UNF) disposal. 

The projects were selected to develop technologies to advance UNF recycling, reduce the volume of high-level waste requiring permanent disposal, and provide safe domestic advanced reactor fuel stocks. 

UNF can be recycled to make new fuel and byproducts that support the deployment of nuclear energy. 

Once discharged from a nuclear reactor, the UNF is initially stored in steel-lined concrete pools surrounded by water. It is later removed from those pools and placed into dry storage casks with protective shielding. Most of the nation’s used fuel is stored at more than 70 reactor sites across the country. 

Projects funded through the Converting UNF Radioisotopes Into Energy (CURIE) program are expected to enable secure, economical recycling of UNF and substantially reduce the volume, heat load, and radiotoxicity of waste requiring permanent disposal. These efforts also are intended to provide a fuel feedstock for advanced reactors.  

Led by DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), the following teams were selected to develop separation technologies with improved proliferation resistance and safeguards technologies for fuel recycling facilities, and perform system design studies to support fuel recycling:  

Argonne National Laboratory will develop a highly efficient process that converts 97% of UNF oxide fuel to metal using stable next-generation anode materials. (Award amount: $4,900,000) 

Argonne National Laboratory will develop, produce, and test a suite of compact rotating packed bed contactors for used nuclear fuel reprocessing. (Award amount: $1,520,000) 

Curio will develop and demonstrate steps of the team’s UNF recycling process—known as NuCycle—at the laboratory scale. (Award amount: $5,000,000) 

EPRI will develop a recycling tool intended to address the coupled challenges of nuclear fuel life-cycle management and advanced reactor fuel supply. (Award amount: $2,796,545) 

GE Research will develop a revolutionary safeguards solution for aqueous reprocessing facilities. (Award amount: $6,449,997)  

Idaho National Laboratory will design, fabricate, and test anode materials for electrochemically reducing actinide and fission product oxides in UNF. (Award amount: $2,659,677) 

Mainstream Engineering will develop a vacuum swing separation technology to separate and capture volatile radionuclides, which should lower life cycle capital and operating costs, and minimize waste that must be stored. (Award amount: $1,580,774) 

NuVision Engineering will design, build, and commission an integrated material accountancy test platform that will predict post-process nuclear material accountancy to within 1% uncertainty in an aqueous reprocessing facility. (Award amount: $4,715,163) 

University of Alabama at Birmingham will develop a single-step process that recycles UNF by recovering the bulk of uranium and other transuranics from UNF after dissolution in nitric acid. (Award amount: $1,844,998)  

University of Colorado, Boulder will advance technology capable of high-accuracy, substantially faster measurements of complex UNF mixtures. (Award amount: $1,994,663) 

University of North Texas will develop a self-powered, wireless sensor for long-term, real-time monitoring of high-temperature molten salt density and level to enable accurate safeguarding and monitoring of electrochemical processing of UNF. (Award amount: $2,711,342)  

University of Utah will develop a pyrochemical process for efficiently converting UNF into a fuel feedstock suitable for sodium-cooled fast reactors or molten-salt-fueled reactors. (Award amount: $1,454,074)