The DOE/NRC Criticality Safety for Commercial-Scale High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) for Fuel Cycle and Transportation (DNCSH) initiative is a collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to establish new criticality benchmark data for commercial-scale nuclear energy. The results will be crucial for the regulation and licensing of facilities handling special nuclear material and the certification of transportation packages for such materials, as outlined in the federal regulations. The project also l engages in activities that support the efficiency and robustness of licensing and criticality safety benchmark development processes such as nuclear data improvements.
DOE is funding 16 projects through the first proposal call. The laboratory-led awards will cover the following five topic areas:
- UF6 transportation with moderator exclusion
- 10-20% enrichment gap
- Non-fissile material validation
- Fissile salts
- Advanced moderator nuclear data
These projects will support the development of data that will be useful to the NRC licensing evaluation process and industry’s licensing submittals pertaining to commercial-scale HALEU operations. The publicly available data developed from these projects will enable efficient future design and safety reviews and help the nuclear industry develop new and novel solutions to address data gaps.
The awardees span six national laboratories and include partnerships with six universities and multiple industry partners.
Please visit DOE/NRC Collaboration for Criticality Safety Support for Commercial-Scale HALEU Fuel Cycles and Transportation (DNCSH) | ORNL for more information.
Workshop #2
A Collaboration between the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory CommissionWhen: Wednesday, August 27, 2025, 1 to 4 p.m. EST
Where: Webinar, Microsoft Teams
Public Meeting Announcement
Teams Registration LinkAbstract: Demand for a fuel enrichment range known as high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) is rapidly increasing, driven by both potential new, advanced power reactors and performance enhancements to existing commercial power reactors. The HALEU Availability Program is addressing existing challenges to the U.S. infrastructure necessary for a commercial-scale enrichment operation that supplies this demand.
However, there is an additional important parallel consideration for a timely transition to HALEU-based fuel cycles, in the realization of new experiments and data needed to assess and support the demonstration of the performance and safety of new HALEU-based systems. A significant component of that data is criticality benchmarks that are relevant for the specific proposed fuel forms, geometries, neutron absorbers, moderators for facility operations, and transportation at commercial scale. The commercial scale component is important, as it is currently possible to produce and transport fissile material at any enrichment in any fuel form in small quantities. The economic viability of HALEU-based fuel cycles is sensitive on being able to safely scale up the quantity for these specific types of fuel.
Congress has allocated $100 million to DOE to develop criticality safety data and support the industry with transportation challenges, where the latter is a separate activity. Reaffirming this need, recent executive orders "Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies" and "Reinvigorating America's Nuclear Industrial Base" (May 23, 2025) have mandated rapid advanced reactor deployment and supporting infrastructure development. This project, through the development of publicly available data and collaboration with the NRC, will reduce the uncertainty associated with assessing commercial-scale facility and transportation operations for the HALEU fuel cycle and directly support those executive orders.
This webinar -- the second of a series covering several anticipated fuel cycle needs -- will briefly summarize the awarded proposals from the first EAW call and then provide information about the upcoming EAW #2. The main goal of the second DNCSH webinar is to focus on data needs to support facility design/safety evaluations. The information collected will be summarized in the second DNCSH call for proposals, which will address the gaps identified by the DNCSH team, estimated to distribute a total of $6 million.
For additional information, please reach out to the national technical director for this effort, Dr. William Wieselquist, via dncsh@ornl.gov.