Framatome recently received a $49 million, 28-month grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to accelerate the development and commercialization of enhanced accident tolerant fuel (EATF). These fuel designs enhance performance during normal operations at nuclear power plants and provide operators with more time to respond in the event of loss of active cooling.
With growing concerns over the climate and heated debates on grid reliability, the narrative on nuclear is starting to shift. More and more people are starting to realize that the nation’s largest and most reliable source of clean energy must be in the mix to help America meet its future energy needs.
Some jobs are just cooler than others and these researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have a pretty sweet gig. They test the failure points of nuclear materials in order to develop new fuel rods for the nation’s commercial fleet of reactors. Sounds pretty cool, huh? It is, and it all happens right here at the lab’s Severe Accident Test Station, also known as SATS.
Join us on November 22 for a webinar on PROtect, Framatome’s enhanced accident tolerant fuel (EATF) program. Petra-Britt Hoffman, a senior expert in irradiation behavior of fuel rods and fuel assembly structural materials, will discuss Framatome’s near-term and long-term solutions as part of the PROtect program. Learn more and register.
The test marked the return of a capability that is critical to the United States’ role in the development of nuclear fuels, for both the existing fleet and a new generation of advanced reactors under design.