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DOE, General Matter team up for new fuel mission at Hanford
The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (EM) on Tuesday announced a partnership with California-based nuclear fuel company General Matter for the potential use of the long-idle Fuels and Materials Examination Facility (FMEF) at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
According to the announcement, the DOE and General Matter have signed a lease to explore the FMEF's potential to be used for advanced nuclear fuel cycle technologies and materials, in part to help satisfy the predicted future requirements of artificial intelligence.
R. C. Briant, Alvin M. Weinberg
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 2 | Number 6 | November 1957 | Pages 797-803
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE57-A35494
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Molten fluorides of uranium, thorium, plutonium, and other elements potentially have wide applicability as fuels for power reactors. Because of their low vapor pressure they can be used in very high-temperature but low-pressure liquid-fuel reactors. In addition, they possess great chemical flexibility—the molten-salt principle can be applied to burners, thorium-uranium thermal breeders, plutonium-uranium converters, and possibly even to fast plutonium breeders. Because of the very high thermal efficiency obtainable in reactors using molten salt fuel, the fuel cost in a simple burner using enriched U235 is of the order of 2–3 mills/kwhr. A high-temperature reactor using molten uranium salts (Aircraft Reactor Experiment) was operated for a short time at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The reactor was of the circulating-fuel type, with a BeO moderator. The maximum outlet temperature achieved was greater than 1500°F. It is believed that with further development the ARE could be a prototype for an economical uranium burner.