The BN-800 sodium-cooled fast reactor at unit 4 of Russia’s Beloyarsk NPP has registered a year of reliable and safe operation using an almost full load of uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel. Russia says this proves the readiness of the closed nuclear fuel cycle technology for implementation on an industrial scale. The BN-800 is using …
China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) has commissioned a seawater uranium extraction test platform, said to be the largest such test platform to be built in the South China Sea. The new marine test platform has the ability to carry out material verification and amplification experiments in real ocean conditions. It looks like China is committing …
Between 1985 to 2015, U.S. uranium enrichment capacity fell to nearly zero from 27.3 million Separative Work Units a year, while Russia’s Tenex became a world leader, increasing production to 26.6 million SWU a year from just 3 million in the mid-eighties. [Statement source: figures by Centrus and U.S. Energy Information Administration. However, Urenco has …
Moltex was founded in 2014 by Dr. Ian Scott, and was privately funded until 2018. Moltex’s mission is to enable low-cost clean energy as a practical economic solution. On 2018-07-13, New Brunswick Power and NB Government agreed to build, own and operate a SSR-W300, with New Brunswick and Moltex each funding CAD $5,000,000 towards development. …
In March of 2018, Ed Pheil spoke to International Nuclear Materials Management (Vienna Chapter) about Elysium Industries’ Molten Chloride Salt Fast Reactor (MCSFR). In 2018, Elysium Industries USA (Clifton Park, NY) received $3.2 million to develop the computational fluid dynamics models needed to simulate and optimize the flows of chloride molten salt fuel in a …
The Russian MBIR is a 150 MWt, sodium-cooled fast reactor and will have a design life of up to 50 years. It will be a multi-loop research reactor capable of testing lead, lead-bismuth and gas coolants, and running on MOX (mixed uranium and plutonium oxide) fuel. NIIAR intends to set up on-site closed fuel cycle …
Iran is taking back another batch of the 20% enriched uranium stockpiles that were sent to Russia as part of the 2015 nuclear deal. 11 tons of low enriched uranium was originally sent from Iran to Russia. Iran has already gotten some of that material back from Russia and Iran is asking for more back. …
Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and LCW Supercritical Technologies have created five grams of yellowcake — a powdered form of uranium used to produce fuel for nuclear power production — using acrylic fibers to extract it from seawater. LCW, a Moscow, Idaho clean energy company with early support from PNNL through DOE’s Office of …
The US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has submitted to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission a preliminary report on a new uranium fuel that will enable the conversion of six US research reactors from highly enriched uranium to low-enriched uranium. The preliminary report on uranium-molybdenum (U-Mo) monolithic fuel contains data about the performance of the …
KazAtomProm will reduce planned uranium production by 20% for a period of three years beginning in January 2018. Cameco (Canada) announced a 10-month temporary suspension of production from the McArthur River mining and Key Lake milling operations in northern Saskatchewan by the end of January “due to continued uranium price weakness”. Kazakhstan has 12% of …
Uranium can perform reactions that previously no one thought possible, which could transform the way industry makes bulk chemicals, polymers, and the precursors to new drugs and plastics, according to new findings from The University of Manchester. Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the chemists have discovered that uranium can perform reactions that used to …