Lightbridge said Wednesday it has begun irradiation testing of its enriched uranium-zirconium alloy fuel at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Idaho National Laboratory (INL).
The Reston, Va.-based nuclear fuel company said in its press release that this milestone is a step forward in its fuel development and testing program under its cooperative research and development agreement with INL.
Lightbridge entered into that agreement with INL under the DOE’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear program in April 2020.
Through the irradiation testing, the company said it expects to gather data on the fuel alloy’s microstructural evolution, thermal conductivity properties and other data. The information could help license Lightbridge Fuel for future commercial use, the company said.
Scott Holcombe, Lightbridge vice president of engineering, said the testing marks a big step forward. “The data generated in this phase will help us validate some key thermo-mechanical properties of our fuel alloy and how these properties vary with irradiation, moving us closer toward commercial deployment of Lightbridge Fuel in existing and new water-cooled reactors,”
In October, Lightbridge loaded the samples of enriched uranium-zirconium alloy into an experiment assembly into the Advanced Test Reactor in preparation for the irradiation testing.