H Canyon under construction in the early 1950s (left) and in 2010. (Photos: Savannah River Site)
From 2003 to 2011, staff at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site downblended high-enriched uranium in the site’s H Canyon, producing over 300 metric tons (MT) of low-enriched uranium that was fabricated into fuel. The facility has since been idled, but downblending could soon begin again—this time to high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).
The chemical vapor infiltration furnace at BWXT’s Lynchburg Technology Center in Lynchburg, Va. (Photo: BWXT)
BWX Technologies (BWXT) has achieved a key milestone in its project to additively manufacture advanced forms of TRISO fuel for Generation IV advanced nuclear reactors. The Lynchburg Technology Center of subsidiary company BWXT Advanced Technologies, located in Lynchburg, Va., has successfully installed and tested a chemical vapor infiltration (CVI) furnace that solidifies pre-forms that are then filled with TRISO particles, a fuel consisting of carbon and silicon layers surrounding a uranium kernel.
Vertiv and Oklo plan to collaborate on modular, energy-efficient power and cooling systems and designs developed to support data centers driven by nuclear power. (Image: Oklo)
In back-to-back press releases, Oklo recently announced two new partnerships that seek to advance the deployment of its commercial power reactors in the data center market.
These partnerships, one with Ohio-based Vertiv Holdings and one with Colorado-based Liberty Energy, continue Oklo’s trend in working to position their Aurora powerhouse as a key part of the energy solution for powering the AI boom.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright (center) and leaders from Argonne, Intel, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise cut the ribbon to celebrate the Aurora exascale supercomputer. (Photo: Argonne)
Leaders from private companies, government, and national laboratories gathered at Argonne National Laboratory on July 17 and 18 for an exclusive AI x Nuclear Energy Executive Summit that the Department of Energy called a first-of-its-kind forum to “align next-generation nuclear systems with the needs of digital infrastructure.”
(A) Computational domain and material distribution used in the simulations. The domain is rotated so that the Opalinus Clay strata are vertical. (B) 3D contour plots of neutral uncharged tritiated water (left) and charged 36Cl− (right) solutes at 900 days. (C) Comparison of observed (symbols) and simulated (lines) borehole concentrations using the 3D model. (Image: Sarsenbayev et al.)
Researchers with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working with scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Orléans, have modeled radionuclide behavior in deep geologic formations, offering a tool for developing a defensible safety case for the underground disposal of radioactive waste.
Team members and the new closure welding system that seals canisters containing spent fuel. (Photo: DOE)
Teams from the Department of Energy’s Offices of Environmental Management and Nuclear Energy recently collaborated on the Road Ready Demonstration Project by testing new equipment to seal spent nuclear fuel into a safe and transportable system for future shipments out of Idaho.
The ETU 3.0 reactor vessel was lowered into position using construction cranes and mounted on a support structure attached to the building’s foundation. (Photo: Kairos Power)
A reactor vessel has been installed by Kairos Power for its third Engineering Test Unit (ETU 3.0) at the company’s campus in Oak Ridge, Tenn.