Advanced reactors are being designed to use fuel forms and enrichments that have yet to be demonstrated commercially. Motivation to do this stems from a push for higher levels of inherent (rather than engineered) safety, improved efficiency, longer times between refueling, and better coupling to advanced fuel cycles of the future. Manufacturing, operation, and management of these fuels has been demonstrated at the pilot level, but commercialization remains unrealized. Significant investment across public and private sectors is needed to bring these fuels to safe and economic operation at scale. While there are decades of experience with safe and secure management of irradiated legacy fuels, equivalent levels of experience are not present for advanced fuel forms. Efficient management of these novel fuel forms in storage, transportation, treatment, and disposal will be necessary to optimize costs and enable deployment of a fleet of advanced reactors.
Key Issue: Limited Advanced Reactor Fuel Qualification Guidance, Data, and Testing Facilities
Most of the advanced reactor developers intend to use fuels that differ in composition, form, and design compared to what is used in the current fleet of LWRs. All these fuel designs will require guidance endorsed by the regulator, as well as qualification and testing prior to their approval for use. Similarly, any future optimizations to these fuels, or, depending on their qualification basis, changes to the fuel fabrication processes, will require additional qualification and testing. Several of the near-term advanced reactor fuels can leverage existing data, operating experience, and reference fuel designs and specifications; more work is needed, however, to ensure cost-effective deployment. Also, the available data may not be adequate to establish a sufficiently broad operating envelope or safety basis for some industrial purposes. While these fuel specifications provide an efficient way to derisk demonstrations and first deployments, future fuel optimizations to improve economics, improve operating lifetime, and to respond to any emergent issues discovered during fleet-wide operations will require additional qualification activities performed in a timely and efficient manner.
ACTION:
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Demonstrate methods to accelerate the qualification of advanced reactor fuels: This action requires industry-wide engagement and includes multiple activities to support more efficient qualification of new and optimized fuel designs. Actions include coordination of qualification needs among fuel developers, development of standardized methodologies to leverage improvements in modeling and simulation, implementation of advanced methodologies in test design, enabling efficient review by multiple regulatory agencies, and support for retention and development of relevant fuel research and development infrastructure.
Traditional irradiation experiments in research reactors can span several years, creating significant schedule risk. DOE could mitigate this by supporting alternative pathways, such as performance testing under prototypic operating conditions to demonstrate fuel behavior, safety margins, and regulatory compliance.
Action Owner: Advanced reactor vendors, EPRI, Institute of Nuclear Power Operators (INPO), Conexus, DOE
Need Date: 2030
Progress to Date on Addressing Key Issue: Tri-structural ISOtropic (TRISO) fuel Topical Report was the first step toward this for TRISO fuel. Additional work is underway at EPRI, Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and others to expand the range of properties resulting in acceptably safe fuel, easing the qualification process. Methods are in development through the Liquid Fuel Performance Characterization project to provide a pathway for liquid fuels to gain safety approval via the regulator.
Recent executive orders set the goal of bringing three new reactors to criticality by July 4, 2026. Achieving this timeline will require either the use of previously approved fuels or operation under authorized conditions that incorporate engineered features to provide a safety margin and compensate for limited data on unqualified fuels.
Key Issue: Irradiated Advanced Reactor Fuel Management Relies on Legacy Data
Regulations for storage, transportation, treatment or conditioning, and disposal of used fuel are based on experience with oxide fuels. Some of these regulations may be reasonable for non-oxide fuels, but the different physical and chemical forms and radiation histories of advanced fuels could lead to drastically different materials in need of management. Providing clear standardized, RIPB pathways from irradiation to disposal for unneeded materials will enable market-driven solutions. Similarly, clear paths to recovery and reuse for valuable isotopes can maximize the value of extracted materials and improve security within the energy system.
ACTION:
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Develop a holistic approach to lifecycle management of irradiated materials: Review of the compatibility of existing regulations with advanced reactor fuel forms is needed. A method to develop technology-neutral acceptance criteria for disposal will be established. Irradiated fuel management technologies for advanced reactor fuels will be evaluated, and a cost-benefit analysis of fuel storage options will be performed. Compatibility of advanced reactor fuel forms with waste acceptance criteria codified in law will be reviewed and required treatment to meet these criteria identified. Opportunities for the recovery of isotopes during these treatment steps will be evaluated. The Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization and the DOE will continue to collaborate on these topics.
Action Owner: EPRI, Conexus, NEI, advanced reactor vendors, DOE
Need Date: 2030
Progress to Date on Addressing Key Issue: TRISO Storage and Transportation phenomena identification and ranking table has been published, aligning the industry on needed experiments. A joint DOE/NRC project on Criticality Safety for Commercial-Scale HALEU Fuel Cycle and Transportation evaluated critical benchmarks for TRISO, finding similarity and enabling use of existing data. The WISARD joint project coordinated by OECD/NEA has kicked off, conducting assessments of numerous advanced reactor fuels across the back end.
Key Issue: Haleu Enrichment and Deconversion Services Availability
The secure and timely deployment of advanced reactors critically depends on the availability of HALEU. Increasing HALEU demand to support these advanced designs will place additional pressure on an already constrained low-enriched uranium (LEU) supply market. Current enrichment and deconversion capabilities are insufficient to meet anticipated HALEU requirements, creating potential bottlenecks that risk delaying advanced reactor deployment. To address this, strategic investments and incentives are necessary to expand capacity throughout the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle, including both enrichment and deconversion services. Accelerated efforts by industry and government to grow infrastructure and production capabilities are essential to avoid supply chain disruptions and enable successful commercialization of advanced reactor technologies.
ACTION:
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Accelerate implementation of existing government programs to expand front-end fuel cycle capacity: Use currently approved government funding mechanisms to rapidly incentivize private sector investment in expansion and/or development of fuel cycle capacity. Advocate for swift execution of these programs to ensure secure and timely availability of LEU and HALEU, enabling successful commercialization and deployment of advanced reactor technologies.
Action Owner: NEI, CNA, advanced reactor developers, owner/operators
Need Date: 2024 (complete)
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Accelerate government support for regional commercial fuel recycling: Employ government funding and/or offtake agreements to catalyze rapid private sector investment and build-out of regional fuel recycling capacity to recover material from legacy used fuel stockpiles. Advocate for government funding and/or offtake agreements to catalyze rapid private sector investment and build-out of fissile material recovery capacity. As called for in the United States’ Executive Order on Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base, the acceleration of recycling capability must be backed by a comprehensive national policy to support the management of spent nuclear fuel, including permanent disposal.
Action Owner: CNA, NEI, Conexus, advanced reactor developers, owner/operators
Need Date: 2030
Progress to Date on Addressing Key Issue: DOE issued Requests for Proposal for both LEU and HALEU to incentivize growth across the front end of the fuel cycle, with the goal of expanding domestic enrichment, conversion, and mining capacity. Awardees have been selected under both solicitations, but to date no substantial funds have been disbursed.
Key Issue: Commercial Scalability of Advanced Reactor Fuels Manufacturing
There is currently no supply chain to support the manufacturing of advanced reactor fuels at commercial scale. Significant industry-wide efforts will be required to ensure fuel manufacturing capacity and cost do not delay the deployment of advanced reactors. Areas involved include the supply of fuel feedstock (see Key Issue: Accelerate Government Support for Regional Commercial Fuel Recycling) and other non-fuel components (for example, high-grade graphite, cladding alloys, sodium, molten salt feedstocks); transportation of feedstock materials; efficient and cost-effective production of fuels; transportation and delivery of finished fuel products; and on-site inspection and handling of new fuels designs. The manufacturing processes for current advanced reactor fuel designs— which were originally developed for research reactor applications, pilot-scale demonstrations, or qualification testing—have inefficiencies, throughput limitations, and quality specifications that will challenge the economic production of advanced reactor fuels. It is anticipated that fuel costs will come down naturally as industry scale-up occurs; however, addressing fundamental inefficiencies in fuel production as early as possible will support efficient capital expenditure as commercial-scale facilities and processes are deployed.
ACTION:
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Support industrywide transitions to cost-effective and efficient advanced reactor fuel production and management systems: Working across boundaries, conduct research, development, and demonstration projects focused on driving costs down on the manufacturing, transportation, and use of advanced reactor fuels. Identify opportunities to standardize supply chain and transportation infrastructure to reduce duplication of efforts and barriers to entry for suppliers. Optimize transportation for feedstocks and fuel forms of various compositions and enrichments. Right-size specifications to deliver cost-effective fuels with adequate safety margins. Optimize quality control burdens and improve throughput of fabrication processes to reduce costs. Determine cost targets that enable broad deployment and develop plans to achieve them.
Action Owner: EPRI, NEI, CNA, advanced reactor developers, owner/operators
Need Date: 2027
Key Issue: Anticipated High Cost of Advanced Reactor Fuel
Many advanced reactor fuels are designed to use high-assay low- enriched uranium (HALEU). While the high cost to produce HALEU impacts reactor economics, the cost of fuel manufacturing beyond the enriched uranium product is also creating challenges. TRISO fuel, metal fuel, and salt fuels all require manufacturing processes that have not been truly commercialized. They are still based on laboratory scale production, and in the process of being scaled up by various companies. In order for an economic case to be made for fleetwide deployment of advanced reactors, the manufacturing costs of advanced reactor fuels must be optimized.
ACTION:
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Develop cost-reduction strategies for advanced reactor fuel: Cost-reduction strategies in the near term for TRISO and metallic fuel need to be developed, while salt synthesis pathways for molten salt reactors need to be matured in the longer term. TRISO manufacturing requires costly quality assurance checks at numerous points in the process that eclipse the efficiency with which the material is produced. By optimizing the timing and selection of quality assurance checks, substantial reductions in manufacturing cost can be made without additional irradiation campaigns. Metal fuels are most commonly produced using a batch casting process that creates larger quantities of HALEU waste than preferrable. Transitioning to extrusion, continuous casting, or other such methods to minimize waste and maximize throughput will help reduce the cost of this fuel form.
Action Owner: EPRI, fuel vendors, national labs
Need Date: TRISO 2028, Metal 2028, Salt 2030