Research & Applications

I really think so. Especially after visiting Abilene Christian University’s new Dillard Science and Engineering Research Center, the home of the Nuclear Energy Experimental Testing (NEXT) Lab and where the university will test its new molten salt research reactor design. The visit was part of the 12th Thorium Energy Alliance Conference. NEXT Lab director and program manager Rusty Towell anticipates that the research reactor will be operational in two years, and I believe it will. What was most impressive is that the reactor is suited to be scaled to any size from small to large—a key feature in any decarbonized world.

New research into the dynamics and structure of high-temperature liquid uranium trichloride (UCl₃) salt—a potential fuel for molten salt reactors—has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. A recent news release from Oak Ridge National Laboratory describes how researchers from ORNL, Argonne National Laboratory, and the University of South Carolina used ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) to document the unique chemistry of liquid UCl₃ “for the first time.”

Idaho National Laboratory has completed substantial construction of the first new hot cell facility at the lab site in 49 years—a Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL) that will accelerate research, development, and qualification of structural nuclear materials for both existing and new nuclear reactors. In an announcement last week of the milestone and the ribbon-cutting ceremony held to mark it, INL said the SPL is expected to be fully operational in 2025.

When a SpaceX rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center on September 10 (see video here), sending a crewed commercial mission into low Earth orbit, an experiment designed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory was onboard. Several high-purity metal samples will orbit Earth and absorb cosmic radiation for five days—including that from the Van Allen radiation belt—to help the lab answer questions about the radiation environment for manned space missions, according to a news release from PNNL.

Funds earmarked for “integrated biological and computational low-dose radiation research” will go to 14 university research projects in a new approach to federally funded low-dose radiation research that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to find cellular markers of radiation health effects. The Department of Energy announced on August 21 that these 14 projects on cellular and molecular responses to low-dose radiation would collectively get $19.5 million in funding over three years.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy for the first time has awarded access to Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) for Super Rapid Turnaround Experiments (RTEs). The 13 selected research projects, announced August 21, will examine the performance of nuclear fuels and materials for existing and planned nuclear power reactors. The project teams include 13 principal investigators collectively representing six universities, three national lab facilities, and one industry partner. They are getting no-cost access to capabilities valued at about $1.8 million.

The adulterating of food products for financial gain, either through dilution, substitution, mislabeling, or other action, has become a lucrative industry. And because food fraud is designed to avoid detection, gauging its financial impacts can be difficult. Experts estimate that food fraud affects 1 percent of the global food industry at a cost of about $10 billion to $15 billion a year, with some estimates putting the cost as high as $40 billion a year, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

A facility at Argonne National Laboratory has been simulating nuclear reactor cooling systems under a wide range of conditions since the 1980s. Its latest task, described by Argonne in an August 13 news release, is testing the performance of passive safety systems for new reactor designs.

Designed as a half-scale model of a real reactor system, Argonne’s Natural Convection Shutdown Heat Removal Test Facility (NSTF) is used for large-scale experimental testing of the performance of passive safety systems, which are designed to remove decay heat using natural forces including gravity and heat convection. Those tests yield benchmarking data qualified to the level of National Quality Assurance-1 (NQA-1) that is shared with vendors and regulators to validate computational models and guide licensing of new reactors and components.

Transparency is one advantage of certain molten salts that could serve as both a coolant and fuel carrier in an advanced reactor. For scientists studying molten salt chemistry and behavior at the laboratory scale, it helps if the test vessel is transparent too. Now, Oak Ridge National Laboratory has created a custom glass test cell with a 1-liter capacity to observe how gases move within a column of molten salt, the Department of Energy announced August 5.

Nuclear power already has an energy density advantage over other sources of thermal electricity generation. But what if nuclear generation didn’t require a steam turbine? What if the radiation from a reactor was less a problem to be managed and more a source of energy? And what if an energy conversion technology could scale to fit nuclear power systems ranging from miniature batteries to the grid? The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) is asking these types of questions in a request for information on High Power Direct Energy Conversion from Nuclear Power Systems, released August 1.

Generative artificial intelligence paired with advanced diagnostic tools could detect potential problems in nuclear power plants and deliver a straightforward explanation to operators in real time. That’s the premise of research out of the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, and just one example of the DOE’s increasing exploration of AI applications in nuclear science and technology research. Training and restraining novel AI systems take expertise and data, and the DOE has access to both. According to a flurry of reports and announcements in recent months, the DOE is setting out its plans to ensure the United States can use AI to its advantage to enhance energy security and national security.

A plutonium target bombarded with a beam of titanium-50 in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s 88-Inch Cyclotron for 22 days has yielded two atoms of the superheavy element 116, in a proof of concept that gives Berkeley Lab researchers a path to pursue the heaviest element yet—element 120. The result was announced July 23 at the Nuclear Structure 2024 conference; a paper has been submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters and published on arXiv.

The University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) is the latest member of Nuclear Medicine Europe, an industry association for the radiopharmaceutical and molecular imaging industry in Europe, the University of Missouri announced July 17.

A new supercomputer named Bitterroot started operating in June at Idaho National Laboratory’s Collaborative Computing Center (C3) and is speeding up nuclear energy research by improving access to modeling and simulation tools. Bitterroot arrived at INL in March, and the announced July 15 that the supercomputer was open to users on June 18 after installation and an extensive program of testing.

Oceans link all the continents of the world, and fish don’t respect boundary lines. So it’s fitting that a global organization—the International Atomic Energy Agency—is helping nations detect and monitor both plastic pollution and biotoxins in marine algae that can lead to outbreaks of contaminated seafood.

Comprehensive analysis of 245 operational coal power plants in the United States by a team of researchers at the University of Michigan has scored each site’s advanced reactor hosting feasibility using a broad array of attributes, including socioeconomic factors, safety considerations, proximity to populations, existing nuclear facilities, and transportation networks. The results could help policymakers and utilities make decisions about deploying nuclear reactors at sites with existing transmission lines and a ready workforce.

Lauren Garrison

We have seen many advancements in the fusion field in the past handful of years. In 2021, the National Academies released a report titled Bringing Fusion to the U.S. Grid.^a In March 2022, the White House held a first-ever fusion forum, “Developing a Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy.”^b The National Ignition Facility had a record-setting fusion pulse that achieved more power output than the laser input, called ignition, in December 2022.^c The Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) started a new public-private partnership program, the fusion milestone program, in May 2023 that made awards to eight fusion companies in a cost-share model.^d That same summer, FES got a new associate director, Dr. Jean Paul Allain,^e who has announced intentions for changing the structure of the FES office to better embrace an energy mission for fusion while keeping the strong foundation in basic science and non-fusion plasmas. ITER construction has continued, with various parts being delivered and systems finished. For example, the civil engineering of the tokamak building was completed in September 2023 after 10 years of work.^f Even more fusion companies have been founded, and the Fusion Industry Association has 37 members now.^g

Chapman Nuclear, Inc. is a third generation nuclear company focused on power generation, shielding, and construction. For over 70 years, our family has served as champions and good stewards for the nuclear industry while on the cutting edge of innovation.

Regardless of how you power our grid or how you attempt to decarbonize our economy, we will need many various metals to achieve any future, or even to just continue with business as usual. Critical metals like cobalt, lithium, nickel, and neodymium are essential to a low-carbon-energy future if renewables and electric vehicles are to play a large role.¹ Even if nuclear provides 100 percent of our power, just operating the grid and electrifying most sectors will take huge amounts of critical metals like copper, notwithstanding the fact that nuclear power requires the least amount of metals and other materials of any energy source.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory want to make the sensors in nuclear power plants more accurate by linking them to electronics that can withstand the intense radiation inside a reactor. Electronics containing transistors made with gallium nitride, a wide-bandgap semiconductor, have been tested in the ionizing radiation environment of space. Now, according to a June 24 article from ORNL, tests carried out in the research reactor at Ohio State University indicate they could withstand neutron bombardment within a nuclear fission reactor.