The Department of Energy awarded $17 million on August 30 for 16 experiment and analysis projects expected to yield criticality data that will assist the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in licensing and regulating high-assay low-enriched uranium and the fuel infrastructure-including packaging and transportation containers-required to demonstrate and deploy HALEU-fueled advanced nuclear reactors. Project teams include six national laboratories taking lead roles in partnership with other labs, universities, and multiple industry partners.

A critical part of HALEU availability: The joint DOE and NRC Criticality Safety for Commercial-Scale HALEU for Fuel Cycle and Transportation project falls under the DOE's HALEU Availability Program, which supports the availability of HALEU for civilian domestic research, development, demonstration, and commercial use. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provided $700 million to the HALEU Availability Program, and up to $60 million is made available for HALEU criticality benchmarking.

"Many advanced reactor developers require HALEU to achieve smaller designs, longer operating cycles, and increased efficiencies over existing technologies," said acting assistant secretary for nuclear energy Michael Goff. "The data collected from these projects will support efforts to ensure HALEU infrastructure is licensed and regulated in time for reactor demonstrations and deployments"

The DOE plans to issue two more calls for criticality benchmarking proposals. The second call is planned for early 2025.

The projects: The projects announced for funding will cover five topic areas: (1) uranium hexafluoride transportation with moderator exclusion, (2) 10-20 percent enrichment gap, (3) nonfissile material validation, (4) fissile salts, and (5) advanced moderator nuclear data. According to the DOE, the publicly available data developed from these projects could help the nuclear industry develop new and novel solutions to address data gaps.

The 16 projects awarded are listed below, with the lead in bold. More information is available online.

• Benchmark Validation for Transportation of TRISO HALEU Fuel for Advanced Reactors- Idaho National Laboratory, BWX Technologies, Kairos Power, X-energy, Radiant, JFoster & Associates, and University of Michigan.
• THETA: TRISO-Form HALEU-Fueled Experiment for Transport Applications-Los Alamos National Laboratory, Kairos.
• Benchmark of Historical Y-12 Critical Experiments with UF₆ Cylinder Model 8A Containers-Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, CS Engineering, University of Tennessee.
• PETALE Benchmark-LLNL, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), University of California-Berkeley.
• Thermal/Epithermal eXperiments (TEX) Additional Chlorine Configurations to Provide Validation for TerraPower's Molten Chloride Salt Fuel-LLNL, LANL, TerraPower.
• Evaluation of Already Performed Critical Experiments and Design of New Critical Experiments with the New 19.75 wt% 235U Enriched IPEN/MB-01 Core for ICSBEP Publication-ORNL, GE Vernova, IPEN (Brazil).
• Evaluation of SLOWPOKE-2 Refuel Measurements-ORNL, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL).
• High-Temperature Graphite Double Differential Scattering Cross Sections: Measurement, Evaluation, and Validation-ORNL, Yarmouk University (Jordan).
• Evaluation and BM Development of Reactor Critical Experiments of the RPI Reactor Critical Facility with Noteworthy Non-fissile SS Element Sensitivity-ORNL, INL, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
• Characterization of ISU's AGN-201 Reactor for Qualification as an ICSBEP Benchmark-ORNL, GE Vernova, Idaho State University.
• Evaluation of Critical Configurations of the Missouri S&T Reactor-ORNL, Missouri University of Science and Technology.
• ZED-2 Measurements with In-Core Absorbers-ORNL, CNL.
• Temperature Dependent Transmission and S(alpha, beta) Measurements of Advanced Nuclear Moderators-ORNL, X-energy.
• eDeimos Experiments with Westinghouse for new HALEU Benchmarks-LANL, Westinghouse.
• HALEU Critical Experiments in Water Moderated UO2 Fuel Rod Lattices-Sandia National Laboratories, Orano.
• Critical Experiments Targeting Optimum Moderation Conditions-Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Sandia, ORNL.