INL receives $7 million award to advance next-gen nuclear fuel
Idaho National Laboratory officials spoke Monday morning about the $7 million project awarded to the site’s Advanced Test Reactor facility 47 miles west of Idaho Falls to advance next-generation nuclear fuels through the High-performance Optimized Recycled Nuclear Isotopes for Gen IV reactors, or HORNIG, program. Managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, the HORNIG program is a $50 million funding initiative designed to support the research and development of commercially deployable transuranic, or TRU, fuel technologies. The program involves eight projects spread across the United States. INL’s project is called IMPACT, an acronym for Irradiation of Molten Plutonium Actinide Chloride fuels and Testing. The lab will help develop and test a chloride fuel salt containing recycled transuranic elements for use in molten salt reactors. It will involve irradiation testing, fuel characterization and modeling to evaluate fuel performance and generate data needed to advance qualification of transuranic-bearing molten salt fuel. “INL is really pleased to be one of the projects,” said Dr. Jess Gehin, associate lab director for nuclear science and technology. “It will utilize the facilities that we have at INL in the Materials & Fuels Complex.” The Energy Department announced Oct. 29 all eight research
