CURIE_SBIR_STTR_CP_FOA_DE-FOA-0002692-3.pdf
Is this not what GEH re doing now with it's 8% fuel for New SMR's
Is the re-enrichment of UNF happening at Wilmington right now? I suspect so, will it also lead to capture of new medical Isotopes and REE, I suspect so! This is why the medical capture announced by SILEX has not been announced yet.
AND I rekon it still secret stuff, this is why I reckon we are in for a double whammy ! it will help get the US out of a messy situation with the Russians as well, the US together with Paducah will mean the US will have ample Uranium 235 and UF6 conversion as well if they use UNF re-enrichment and Tails re-enrichment as well,one at Wilmington and one at Paducah, the US will not need a lot of Uranium mining, some maybe but not what would have been required if these project weren't going ahead!
C. PROGRAM OVERVIEW
The program goal of CURIE is to enable commercially viable reprocessing of used nuclear fuel
(UNF)5 from the current light water reactor (LWR) fleet by resolving key gaps/barriers in
reprocessing technologies, process monitoring, and facility design. The actinides in LWR UNF
would ideally be reprocessed into
feedstock that would be used to fuel advanced nuclearreactors (ARs), while other commercially valuable materials would be harvested for industrialand medical uses. Projects funded under CURIE will develop i
nnovative separationstechnologies, process monitoring techniques for special nuclear material (SNM6), and/or
equipment designs that will significantly improve the economics and process monitoring of
reprocessing technologies
while dramatically reducing the volume of high-level waste (HLW)7from LWR UNF requiring disposal (see Section I.D, “Program Objectives”
. Specifically, CURIE is
interested in separations technologies, process monitoring to enable predictive material
accountancy, innovative equipment designs, and systems analyses that satisfy one or more of
the global program metrics without negatively impacting other program metrics:
(1)
significantly (i.e., at least an order of magnitude) reduce the volume of LWR HLWrequiring permanent disposal,(2)
maintain disposal costs in the range of 0.1¢/kilowatt-hour (kWh)83) provide a 1¢/kWh9 fuel cost for a 200 metric tons heavy metal (MTHM)/yr nth-of-a-kind
(NOAK) facility,
(4) enable in situ SNM process monitoring approaches that predict, within 1% uncertainty
and under representative conditions, the post-process material accountancy, and
(5) enable UNF separations that do not produce pure plutonium streams.
In aggregate, these metrics are envisioned to support a commercially viable reprocessing
technology that would provide valuable AR fuel feedstock and the ability to recover fission
products of interest (e.g., precious metals and medical radioisotopes) while minimizing the
Nation’s HLW waste impact. CURIE is part of a comprehensive, nearly $90 million ARPA -E
strategy to manage and reduce the Nation’s HLW waste inventory and is designed to
complement the ARPA-E ONWARDS10 program. While both the ONWARDS and CURIE programs seek to enable innovations that will minimize HLW quantities, CURIE focuses on the
development of technologies that will enable UNF from the current LWR fleet to be utilized as
feedstock for future nuclear fuel.Questions about this FOA? Check the Frequently Asked Questions available at http://arpa-e.energy.gov/faq. For questions that have
not already been answered, email [email protected] (with FOA name and number in subject line); see FOA Sec. VII.A.
Problems with ARPA-E eXCHANGE? Email [email protected] (with FOA name and number in subject line).
AR-314-03.19
ARPA-E estimates that, for this hypothetical reactor, the HALEU fuel cost would be
approximately 1.2¢/kWh. Developing a cost competitive reprocessing technology would
minimize the production of further HLW by developing a commercial market for
reprocessed materials, while stabilizing AR fueling with a domestic material source. The
1¢/kWh cost metric is also comparable to LWR fuel costs, which are estimated at
0.65¢/kWh. Therefore, reprocessed fuel at 1¢/kWh could enable backwards compatibility
with the existing LWR fleet.
(20min delay)