DOE/NRC Collaboration for Criticality Safety Support for Commercial-Scale HALEU Fuel Cycles and Transportation (DNCSH)

Call #3 for Experiment and Analysis Work Packages Will Be Announced Soon
 
Abstract: Demand for a fuel enrichment range known as high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) is rapidly increasing, driven by both potential new, advanced power reactors and performance enhancements to existing commercial power reactors. The HALEU Availability Program is addressing existing challenges to the U.S. infrastructure necessary for a commercial-scale enrichment operation that supplies this demand.

 However, there is an additional important parallel consideration for a timely transition to HALEU-based fuel cycles, in the realization of new experiments and data needed to assess and support the demonstration of the performance and safety of new HALEU-based systems. A significant component of that data is criticality benchmarks that are relevant for the specific proposed fuel forms, geometries, neutron absorbers, moderators for facility operations, and transportation at commercial scale. The commercial scale component is important, as it is currently possible to produce and transport fissile material at any enrichment in any fuel form in small quantities. The economic viability of HALEU-based fuel cycles is sensitive on being able to safely scale-up the quantity for these specific types of fuel.

 Congress recognized this need, and as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, has allocated funds to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop criticality safety data and support the industry with transportation challenges, where the latter is a separate activity. Reaffirming this need, recent executive orders 'Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies' and 'Reinvigorating America's Nuclear Industrial Base' (May 23, 2025) have mandated rapid advanced reactor deployment and supporting infrastructure development. This project, through the development of publicly available data and collaboration with the NRC, will reduce the uncertainty associated with assessing commercial-scale facility and transportation operations for the HALEU fuel cycle and directly support those executive orders. Other important partners in this project include the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)/Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP) as well as the DOE Office of Nuclear Physics (NP). 

Call #3 - the third (and final) of a series covering several anticipated fuel cycle needs - will focus on data needs to support transportable microreactors but will also include all of the topics covered in the previous two calls. 

 For additional information, please reach out to the National Technical Director for this effort, Dr. William Wieselquist, via dncsh@ornl.gov.

About DNCSH

The DNCSH project is a result of Part (a) of Section 2001 “Advanced Nuclear Fuel Availability” of the 2020 Energy Act (Public Law No. 116-260) and the Inflation Reduction Act (H.R. 5376) to support the “availability of HALEU for civilian domestic research, development, demonstration, and commercial use.” This work is focused on Part (a)(2)(A) and Part (a)(2)(C)(ii), executed as a collaboration between the DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

As described in the Act, the objective is the “availability of HALEU for civilian domestic research, development, demonstration, and commercial use.” In other words, enable a HALEU fuel cycle. Included in availability is the necessary data to support its commercial use, specifically in areas licensed under 10CFR70 (facilities) and 10CFR71 (transportation), including both front-end and back-end.

The use of HALEU enrichment, forms, quantities, etc., is dependent on many factors, particularly the reactor design and its needs. This effort will thus review various reactor driven fuel cycles, their criticality safety impacts, other methods and data needs, and issue targeted calls for proposals to meet the project objectives below:

• Enable higher throughput fuel cycle processes.

• Enable higher capacity transportation package designs.

• Reduce licensing uncertainty by enabling quality industry submissions through publicly available data, and

• Fewer requests for additional information from NRC to industry related to nuclear data, code validation, and criticality safety.