Fiscal 2021 allocations released yesterday by the US Senate Committee on Appropriations include USD150 million to initiate the uranium reserve programme to address challenges to the production of domestic uranium. The bills provide appropriations for the fiscal year running from 1 October, 2020 to 30 September, 2021 and also include continued funding for the Advanced Reactors Demonstration Program.

Terrestrial Energy and the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have begun detailed testing of the fuel salt for Terrestrial's Integral Molten Salt Reactor. The IMSR uses two molten salt streams - a fuel salt that contains the uranium and another salt to transfer heat from the reactor to the electricity generation system.

BWXT Nuclear Operations Group, Inc has completed its TRISO nuclear fuel line restart project and is actively producing fuel at its facility in Lynchburg, Virginia, BWX Technologies, Inc has announced. TRISO - standing for TRIstructural-ISOtropic - particles contain a spherical kernel of enriched uranium oxycarbide surrounded by layers of carbon and silicon carbide, which contains fission products.

Fuel elements produced by Framatome using 3D printing technology have completed the first cycle of irradiation at the Gösgen nuclear power plant in Switzerland. These experimental stainless steel and nickel-based alloy components were installed in the 1010 MWe pressurised water reactor in 2019 for a five-cycle programme as part of a qualification project. Framatome said the fuel elements irradiated in the Gösgen plant will be further examined to confirm behaviour in real operating conditions.

Holtec International's canister-based dry used fuel storage technology is set to be deployed in Japan following its signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy. Holtec said its technology provides an alternative option to the technologies currently used in Japan.

Ultra Safe Nuclear Technologies (USNC-Tech) - a subsidiary of Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) - has developed a design concept as part of NASA-funded research into nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) systems for potential use in deep space travel. The concept uses a specialised variation of USNC's proprietary fully ceramic microencapsulated, tristructural isotropic fuel, developed for use in power reactors.

In what Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB describes as a "historic decision", the municipal council of Östhammar yesterday voted in favour of its planned repository for used nuclear fuel at Forsmark. The final decision to authorise the project will now be made by the Swedish government.

The development and validation of modified fuel for use in the four VVER-440 reactors at the Paks nuclear power plant in Hungary has now been completed, Rosatom's nuclear fuel manufacturer subsidiary TVEL announced today. The first consignment of the modified fuel is scheduled to be delivered to the Paks plant later this year.

Westinghouse Electric Company has signed a contract with Ukraine's Energoatom, for the supply of VVER-440 fuel for the Rovno nuclear power plant. They have also signed a Letter of Intent on further exploring localisation of fuel assembly component production in Ukraine. The signing of both documents was witnessed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

A project to remove the last remaining batch of unirradiated highly enriched uranium fuel from Kazakhstan has been completed in a joint effort by Kazakhstan and the USA, the US Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration has announced. The two nations have also signed a new joint statement reaffirming their intention to continue to work together to support the common goal of minimising nuclear proliferation, ensuring nuclear security and strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
 

TerraPower has announced plans to team with nuclear fuel and services provider Centrus Energy to establish commercial-scale, domestic production capabilities for high-assay, low-enriched uranium. This, it says, will be needed to fuel many next-generation reactor designs, including the recently announced Natrium Power Storage System designed by TerraPower and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy.

TVEL, the fuel manufacturer subsidiary of Russia's Rosatom, has supplied fuel for the Budapest Research Reactor in Hungary. The VVR-M2 fuel assemblies - manufactured by the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant - were supplied under a contract signed in 2019 with the Centre for Energy Research of Hungarian Academy of Sciences.