…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks;
Isaiah 2:4
Inside a highly classified facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee — the same facility that enriched uranium for the first atomic bomb in the era of the Manhattan Project — workers are turning old, unexploded warheads into fuel that will power cities.
The recipe to create advanced reactor fuel involves melting weapons-grade uranium with low-enriched uranium in a crucible — a massive, metal cauldron heated to around 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit to turn its contents into molten soup.
Emerging from its furnace, a glowing orange cast filled with the hot liquid uranium is slowly lowered into a cooling chamber. The hardened finished product, which looks like black charcoal, can be safely held in-hand.
This fuel is set to power the next generation of America’s nuclear reactors — small, modular power stations that are easier and cheaper to build. They require far less upkeep and physical space than the aging fleet of large nuclear power plants.
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One of the new reactor designs that will use this high assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel is the Natrium reactor being developed by Bill Gates’ TerraPower company. The first Natrium plant is planned to be built in Wyoming, at the site of an existing coal-fired power plant.
Terrapower is also working with France’s Framatome to develop a HALEU fuel manufacturing line.
_ Pete