The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently agreed to a nine-year contract with TRIGA International to secure new fuel elements for half of the nation’s university-operated research reactors. The first batch of fuel is expected to be delivered to the U.S. by 2023 and will be the first new TRIGA fuel elements produced in more than nine years.
TRIGA International is the world’s only TRIGA fuel supplier in the world. The company completed a major renovation project last year in Romans, France, with support from DOE and restarted its fuel production back in December for the first time since 2012.
DOE agreed to purchase 668 new fuel elements over the next nine years with an initial procurement of 55 elements that could be ready within the next 15 months. The fuel will be used to support 18 TRIGA reactors in the United States and secures a dependable fuel supply for a handful of research reactors at Idaho National Laboratory, including the lab’s new MARVEL microreactor project.
“This fuel procurement ensures continued operation of 12 TRIGA reactors located on college campuses across the country that are helping to train our future nuclear workforce,” said Doug Morrell, the manager of DOE’s Research Reactor Infrastructure Program. “It also secures the fuel that we need to support new DOE initiatives that will help next-generation reactor designs that can be leveraged to help decarbonize our world.”
TRIGA Reactors
TRIGA stands for Training, Research, Isotopes General Atomics. The reactors are primarily used for student training, various research projects, and isotope production.
There are currently 36 TRIGA reactors operating in the world today, including 18 in the United States. DOE manages all of the nuclear fuel that is provided to the nation’s university-operated research reactors through its Research Reactor Infrastructure program within the Office of Nuclear Energy.
The department provided 76 lightly used TRIGA fuel elements to U.S. university research reactors while new TRIGA fuel fabrication was offline to help fill the fuel void.
The first batch of TRIGA fuel will be used to fuel five of the nation’s university-operated research reactors.