Surplus plutonium for power reactor fuel: What’s on offer

The DOE wants applications “with detailed recycling and processing plans, including funding commitments and schedule to utilize the surplus plutonium materials within DOE’s inventories for nuclear fuel for reactors in the United States.” Applications are due November 21, with initial selections expected by the end of the year.

Authorized by executive order: One of the four executive orders issued May 23—“Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security”—instructed the DOE to “identify all useful uranium and plutonium material within DOE’s inventories that may be recycled or processed into nuclear fuel for reactors in the United States,” while the EO “Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base” ordered the agency to “establish a program to dispose of surplus plutonium by processing and making it available to industry for advanced nuclear technologies.”

As with the Reactor Pilot Program, which was opened to applicants in June with its first conditional selections named in August, and the Fuel Line Pilot program, opened to applicants in July with its first selection announced just three weeks later, the DOE plans to use “other transaction agreements” (OTAs) under the new RFA. Under OTAs, the DOE can authorize facilities that “will not require Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing” but that after DOE approval “may be fast-tracked for future NRC licensing.”

The plutonium OTAs will be crafted to “streamline regulatory requirements and limit intellectual property (IP) rights to the government. . . . It is therefore anticipated that agreement terms are close to final and can be implemented as soon as possible after selection.”

However, applicants may be required to give the DOE a license for “specific uses of novel data, technical, financial, or otherwise, generated during the course of the project” that could be used for future research, authorizations, and safety case justifications.

Contenders: The following companies have expressed interest in recycling and using transuranic elements in fuel fabrication include.

• Curio welcomed the plans for closing the nuclear fuel cycle outlined in the executive orders released in May, and recently announced the completion of laboratory-scale demonstrations of its NuCycle voloxidation processing technology.
• Lightbridge, a manufacturer of metallic fuel, has signed an agreement with Oklo to evaluate building a Lightbridge fuel facility inside the facility Oklo plans to construct in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and earlier this month released a white paper on Dispositioning Weapons-Grade Plutonium Using Lightbridge Fuel.
• Newcleo has signed an agreement with Oklo (alongside potential coinvestor Blykalla) to develop advanced fuel fabrication and manufacturing infrastructure in the United States and to invest up to $2 billion in Oklo’s planned fuel cycle facility project.
• Oklo, which is moving ahead through multiple channels on both power reactor and fuel facility deployment (as, among other things, a selectee for the Reactor Pilot Program and the Fuel Line Pilot Program), has partnered with national labs and private companies to further its recycling plans, which include a proposed facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Value propositions: Like the Reactor Pilot Program and the Fuel Line Pilot Program, the Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program offers a twofold value proposition, according to the RFA: “DOE authorization may (1) unlock the next level of private funding; and (2) provide a fast track to an NRC license, and hence, commercialization for authorized recycling facility designs.” Selected companies must meet all costs of carrying out their proposal.

The surplus plutonium RFA also identifies a potential upside for the DOE—the potential that the DOE could “recover the cost” of the plutonium from successful applicants. According to the RFA, the DOE is “considering how to weigh cost recovery and options for mechanisms, materials, or substances to best support cost recovery.”

While the DOE will prioritize “higher quality proposed projects,” it “may also prioritize applications where DOE may recover the cost of the plutonium material, irrespective of any additional costs the applicant may incur in carrying out its proposal,” and the recovered cost “may be from the applicant or a third party.”

Siting and security: Applicants must provide a site in the United States. Other application thresholds include plans that “recognize the appropriate facility security and hazard category requirements for surplus plutonium materials and support the development of site security and implementation plans.”

Applications must also include “detailed plans” for stabilization, packaging, transporting, and storage, including disposition of plutonium-bearing materials and waste; “consideration of material safeguards and security plans”; and a “detailed plan” for qualification of plutonium-containing fuel.

While work should be carried out at a site in the United States effectively under DOE control, “approval for work outside of the United States may be requested, either during the application stage or at any time during the performance of the work, subject to DOE’s sole discretion in approval.” Compliance with U.S. export control laws would be the responsibility of the applicant.

According to the RFA, any sites where plutonium is stored or processed “will be added to the Department of Energy’s IAEA Safeguards Eligible Facility List,” and plutonium stored and/or processed on land not owned or controlled by DOE “will be added to the NRC’s Eligible Facility List for IAEA Safeguards.”

Why plutonium? Plutonium is attractive for nuclear fuel because of its high energy density, and can be blended with other materials, including uranium, into fissionable fuel.

That energy density also makes plutonium attractive for nuclear weapons, so any use and processing of plutonium must have rigorous security and safeguards in place to prevent the diversion of plutonium or the unauthorized disclosure of processing technologies.

Would-be recyclers and fuel fabricators are eyeing plutonium and other fissile components of spent light water reactor fuel as a potential feedstock, but surplus plutonium that has already been processed by the NNSA and is now on offer through the RFA may be the quickest way to get energy-dense, plutonium-containing fuels in proposed advanced reactors.

In late September, Politico reported that a July 31 DOE memo by Deputy Energy Secretary James Danly said as much as 25 metric tons of plutonium could be available for nuclear fuel, with about one-fifth of that amount coming from plutonium pits manufactured for nuclear weapons. The 19.7 metric tons of plutonium materials designated as surplus in the RFA includes about 15.3 metric tons of plutonium in oxide form and about 4.4 metric tons in metal form.

The Savannah River Pit Production Facility at the Savannah River Site is currently under construction, and Los Alamos National Laboratory has facilities with limited plutonium pit throughput capabilities. The Government Accountability Office spelled out the NNSA’s pit production needs—and the challenges that could prevent the NNSA from reaching a goal of producing 80 pits per year by 2030—in a 2023 report.