Research & Applications


General Atomics tests fuel as space nuclear propulsion R&D powers on

January 24, 2025, 12:00PMNuclear News
Image: General Atomics

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) has announced that it has subjected nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) fuel samples to several “high-impact” tests at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Ala. That news comes as NASA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and multiple nuclear and space technology companies continue to build on recent progress in nuclear thermal rocket design and demonstration.

A more open future for nuclear research

January 22, 2025, 3:00PMNuclear NewsRobert Little, Elia Merzari, and Guillaume Wright

A growing number of institutional, national, and funder mandates are requiring researchers to make their published work immediately publicly accessible, through either open repositories or open access (OA) publications. In addition, both private and public funders are developing policies, such as those from the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the European Commission, that ask researchers to make publicly available at the time of publication as much of their underlying data and other materials as possible. These, combined with movement in the scientific community toward embracing open science principles (seen, for example, in the dramatic rise of preprint servers like arXiv), demonstrate a need for a different kind of publishing outlet.

Feinstein Institutes to research novel radiation countermeasure

January 21, 2025, 3:05PMNuclear News
The Feinstein Institutes’ Ping Wang (from left), Max Brenner, and Asha Jacob Varghese will lead a study on treating radiation sickness using the human hormone ghrelin. (Photo: Feinstein Institutes).

The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, home of the research institutes of New York’s Northwell Health, announced it has received a five-year, $2.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate the potential of human ghrelin, a naturally occurring hormone, as a medical countermeasure against radiation-induced gastrointestinal syndrome (GI-ARS).

Three nations, three ways to recycle plastic waste with nuclear technology

January 16, 2025, 12:00PMNuclear News
Image: IAEA

Plastic waste pollutes oceans, streams, and bloodstreams. Nations in Asia and the Pacific are working with the International Atomic Energy Agency through the Nuclear Technology for Controlling Plastic Pollution (NUTEC Plastics) initiative to tackle the problem. Launched in 2020, NUTEC Plastics is focused on using nuclear technology to both track the flow of microplastics and improve upstream plastic recycling before discarded plastic can enter the ecosystem. Irradiation could target hard-to-recycle plastics and the development of bio-based plastics, offering sustainable alternatives to conventional plastic products and building a “circular economy” for plastics, according to the IAEA.

Westinghouse’s lunar microreactor concept gets a contract for continued R&D

January 15, 2025, 9:30AMNuclear News
A concept image of NASA’s Fission Surface Power Project. (Image: NASA)

Westinghouse Electric Company announced last week that NASA and the Department of Energy have awarded the company a contract to continue developing a lunar microreactor concept for the Fission Surface Power (FSP) project.

First GAIN vouchers of 2025 go to Curio, Deep Fission, Kairos, and NuCube Energy

January 9, 2025, 7:04AMNuclear News

The Department of Energy’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) has awarded four fiscal year 2025 vouchers to support the development of advanced nuclear technologies. Each company will get access to specific capabilities and expertise in the DOE’s national laboratory complex—in this round of awards both Idaho National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are named—and will be responsible for a minimum 20 percent cost share, which can be an in-kind contribution.

Argonne investigates industrial SMR applications for postwar Ukraine

November 26, 2024, 3:02PMNuclear News
Argonne director Paul Kearns, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security Bonnie Jenkins, EPRI chief nuclear strategy officer Neil Wilmshurst, and DOE acting assistant secretary for nuclear energy Michael Goff spoke at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo: PNNL/Nazar Kholod)

Argonne National Laboratory will play a leading role in planning and rebuilding a nuclear-generated clean energy infrastructure for postwar Ukraine as part of the lab’s focus on developing small modular reactor applications to help countries meet energy security goals. The latest plans, described in a November 19 article, were announced on November 16 at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

LANL’s Deimos—the first critical experiment with HALEU fuel in over 20 years

November 25, 2024, 12:01PMNuclear News
A subset of the Deimos experiment team. (Photo: LANL)

Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers have performed a critical experiment using high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) TRISO fuel. It is the nation’s first criticality safety experiment using HALEU fuel in more than 20 years. On November 21, LANL announced the work of its Deimos team, which earlier this year carried out an experiment at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC), operated by LANL at the Nevada National Security Site.

Brookhaven experiment offers new way to study nucleus structure

November 19, 2024, 3:00PMANS Nuclear Cafe
STAR study coauthors Jiangyong Jia (front) and Shengli Huang, both of Stony Brook University, in the control room of the STAR experiment at BNL’s RHIC. (Photo: Kevin Coughlin/BNL)

Recently published research done at Brookhaven National Laboratory is offering a new, high-energy method for studying the structure of atomic nuclei. Scientists have been using the Solenoidal Tracker at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), known as STAR, to track the particles produced by ion collisions in the particle accelerator. Their research was published earlier this month in Nature.

Framatome to produce Lu-177 at Romania’s Cernavoda

November 18, 2024, 9:30AMNuclear News
Bernard Fontana (left) of Framatome and Cosmin Ghiță of Nuclearelectrica. (Photo: Framatome)

Framatome and SN Nuclearelectrica, a partially state-owned Romanian nuclear energy company, have entered into a long-term cooperation agreement to produce the medical isotope lutetium-177 at Cernavoda nuclear power plant in Romania. Lu-177 is a beta-emitting radioisotope used in targeted radionuclide therapy for the treatment of neuroendocrine tumors and prostate cancer.

UMich leads Space Force institute on hybrid nuclear power and propulsion concept

November 8, 2024, 12:01PMNuclear News
The H9 Hall thruster, developed at UMich’s Plasmadynamics and Electric Propulsion Laboratory. (Image: William Hurley/University of Michigan)

Seeking spacecraft that can “maneuver without regret,” the U.S. Space Force is investing $35 million in a national research team led by the University of Michigan to develop a spacecraft with an onboard microreactor to produce electricity, with some of that electricity used for propulsion. But this spacecraft would not be solely dependent on nuclear electric propulsion—it would also feature a conventional chemical rocket to increase thrust when needed.

ORNL algorithm shows promise for faster inspection of nuclear materials

November 5, 2024, 12:00PMNuclear News
An enhanced CT scan process developed at ORNL can cut the time required to examine 3D-printed parts by one sixth. (Image: DOE)

A software algorithm developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has reduced the time needed to inspect 3D-printed parts for nuclear applications by 85 percent, the Department of Energy announced on November 1, and that algorithm is now being trained to analyze irradiated materials and nuclear fuel at Idaho National Laboratory.

Special issue of Nuclear Technology planned on the RELAP5 reactor modeling code

October 25, 2024, 9:55AMNuclear News

Nuclear reactor design and analysis never stops, and engineers have an extensive computational toolbox from which to draw for their work. Since 1979, one such tool has been the RELAP5 modeling and simulation software. Now, American Nuclear Society journal Nuclear Technology has announced plans for a special issue dedicated to RELAP5 developments and applications.

Submission of abstracts is open now; email guest editor George Mesina by November 15 to express interest.

Novel quark-gluon model combines nucleon and parton concepts

October 22, 2024, 9:30AMANS Nuclear Cafe
The temporary pair of correlated nucleons pictured here is highlighted in purple. (Image: Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences)

A breakthrough in the understanding of the properties of nuclear structure has been achieved by an international team of scientists comprising researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, University of Munster in Germany, and Institute of Nuclear Physics at the Polish Academy of Sciences. The team, from the nCTEQ collaboration investigating nuclear parton (quark and gluon) distribution functions, developed a quark-gluon model that combined low-energy and high-energy concepts to reproduce the properties of atomic nuclei.

Insights from the DOME draft EA on EBR-II’s second life as a reactor test bed

October 15, 2024, 12:00PMNuclear News
The EBR-II dome, site of the DOME advanced reactor test bed. (Photo: INL)

On October 8, the Department of Energy’s Idaho Operations Office released the draft environmental assessment (EA) Demonstration of Microreactor Experiment (DOME) Test Bed Operations. The draft EA assesses the potential environmental impacts of plans to use the containment dome of the former Experimental Breeder Reactor-II at Idaho National Laboratory’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) to test multiple TRISO-fueled advanced reactor designs on a micro scale.

Australia’s OPAL is back at work after upgrades

October 1, 2024, 3:00PMANS Nuclear Cafe
A technician works inside OPAL's reactor vessel during the maintenance and upgrade project. (Photo: ANSTO)

The only nuclear reactor in Australia has returned to power after a monthslong shutdown for planned essential maintenance and upgrades. The OPAL (for open-pool Australian light water reactor) research reactor at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) campus in Sydney successfully went through the most significant engineering maintenance and upgrade project in its 17-year history.

New uranium and fluorine detection method set to boost nuclear safeguards

October 1, 2024, 9:30AMNuclear News
ORNL’s tandem technologies detect fluorine and isotopes of uranium at the same time to discern the fingerprint of a nuclear material made for fuel or weaponry. (Image: Benjamin Manard and Jacquelyn DeMink/ORNL)

By combining two techniques, analytical chemists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have for the first time simultaneously detected fluorine and different uranium isotopes in a single particle. Quickly detecting both elements together may help International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors determine if and when undisclosed enrichment has taken place. The findings, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, “push the limit” of how fast single particles can be characterized in terms of their chemical, elemental, and isotopic compositions, according to a September 26 news release from ORNL.

Atomic Canyon preps open-source nuclear search tool for release

September 30, 2024, 12:01PMNuclear News

Atomic Canyon is developing a generative AI search for the nuclear energy sector and is working with the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to get it done. On September 26, Atomic Canyon announced its initial results about six months after the collaboration was first announced in March.

NSUF awards 19 Rapid Turnaround Experiments

September 27, 2024, 10:07AMNuclear News

The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy has awarded 19 experimental proposals access to Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) under the 2024 “third call” for Rapid Turnaround Experiment (RTE) projects. In total, the awards are valued at about $1 million and were granted to 19 principal investigators from 11 institutions, including universities and industry researchers.