HALEU: The who, what, when, where ... and how much

摘要

“No fuel, no reactor." So said Monica Regalbuto, director of Integrated Fuel Cycle Strategy at Idaho National Laboratory, during a panel session on advanced reactor supply chains at this past June's American Nuclear Society Annual Meeting. Many advanced reactors would use high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel for smaller, more efficient designs. But as Matt Wald, independent energy writer and consultant and former Nuclear Energy Institute policy analyst, explains in this series on the Gordian knot of nuclear fuel, any hopes for federal funding for the HALEU Availability Program are in the hands of Congress at the time of this writing. So where do things stand as we wait for the Nuclear Fuel Security Act to advance?