Success is not assured, but an advanced fuel system might. Recent work has shown that the potential exists to develop an advanced fuel system that could increase uranium loading beyond what is practical today while meeting the rigorous performance requirements for naval reactors. In comparison to a report on the same topic written in 1995, the 2014 report was quite positive: The origin of the new report can be traced to a request from Congress that led in 2014 to the Office of Naval Reactors (NR) submitting to Congress a Report on Low Enriched Uranium for Naval Reactor Cores (see also an earlier IPFM post). The other two countries with nuclear submarines, China and France, use LEU. Russia and India also use HEU (≥ 20% U-235). These options include pressurized water reactors (PWRs), and a number of possible high-density, low enriched uranium (LEU) fuels.Ĭurrently, US and UK naval reactors are fueled by weapon-grade HEU (93.5% U-235). It ends up recommending two reactor types and seven fuels for further investigation in the next phase of its work. The DNN report was commissioned from three DOE national laboratories with reactor-design expertise: Idaho, Oak Ridge and Argonne. In February 2020, the US Department of Energy's office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation released its report, Initial Evaluation of Fuel-Reactor Concepts for Advanced LEU Fuel Development, a screening study for potential fuel and reactor types that may be relevant to switching US naval nuclear propulsion away from reliance on highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel.
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