 Good afternoon and welcome to think tax perspectives on energy here at think tech Hawaii. I'm your host Guillermo Salvediere, director of international services for the health and safety Institute. And today's show is the high assay law enrichment uranium, and we're going to talk about a few of those questions, given the fact that it's a new type of nuclear fuel that's going to be used for those small modular reactors. So, thank you again for joining us. And hopefully we'll get that questions answered mind you on this slide. It's all public domain information available from the department of energy. Their office of nuclear energy and also from the nuclear regulatory commission. So, without further ado, let's jump right into this presentation and see what what we can we can convey regarding this new fuel. Hey, go ahead and go to the first line. There you go. Thank you. So, on this. Particular have a few we're looking as it's new different fields. Right. So, the ones the agency that governs the regulation of nuclear energy is a nuclear regulatory commission. And they're operating under the auspices of the department of energy. Right. So it's an independent agency that oversees a civilian use of nuclear materials. Right. My time was working in a nuclear plant. I can recall that, you know, a lot of the documentation, a lot of the sign off and a lot of the oversight was done by the NRC. Right. Now, what's going on in this case? Right. So, and I'm following this, this, the second block from the right. And it looks like we're, why is it so important now? Right. I mean, nuclear has been around for a long time. This agency, this commission has been around for a long time. So, the purpose really is the fact that they're stepping up their efforts to bring about this new type of fuel that is a standardized. One of the problems with deploying these SMRs is the fact that nobody has agreed on an overall design. Nobody has agreed on overall fuel type. And of course, the supply chain and something so expensive, you can imagine that that becomes a barrier to entry. So, in this case, agreeing to a type of fuel on these SMRs is a good first step. And one of the previous shows we talked about the fact that they already had a first test bed for a particular SMR reactor that they were already using at the Idaho National Labs and National Renewable Energy Laboratories. So, at least I've got that going already. So, another next step is basically to be the widely accepted use of Hayley. Right. So, now what they're doing is they're using their existing regulatory framework to now include this new type of fuel. Right. So, according to their tools, right, they have already, when it comes to regulation, they want to make sure they have adequate protection, which is licensing. They want to make sure they have adequate oversight that ensures compliance, but they also want to make sure they continue with supporting development of technical basis. Right. So, in other words, a lot of the funding that we've seen from the Department of Energy and also the NRC has gone towards these labs, whether they're developing these reactors to move along this technology. As you can imagine, right, we have some catching up to do with the rest of the world a little bit. And given the fact that we want to make sure we get to these climate goals with the generation of energy, this seems to be like a pretty substantial and reliable type of resource. Right. As we get away from fossil fuels, but we still need base load that's dispatchable. This could be the answer. Right. One of the things we're doing as well, of course, is engaging in international partnerships and we'll get more into that later. Usually that involves part of the supply chain, part of the fuel refining, but then, of course, also the next thing that's important is rulemaking. Right, which now this may require, I mean, it's very minimal, may require some different types of rules when it comes to safety. Right. So best thing is, is right now the existing tools can accommodate the new fuels and that is great news because that will, of course, expedite and simplify this process. Right. So, when I say non-light water reactor fuels, right, you're concerned with the enrichment process, transportation, fabrication of the fuel, fresh fuel transport, putting that into a reactor and then, of course, getting rid of the waste once that happens, which is the radiated fuel transportation and then storing it somewhere. In some cases, some of that fuel can be used or recycled for a new fuel, but that's a whole other process. Right. So when looking at fuel activities, right, like I said earlier, right, enrichment, fabrication, materials and spent fuel, that's the general process that the NRC is looking at when it comes to developing new fuels. Go ahead and go to the next slide. So what is HALU? It's high assay, low enrichment uranium. Right. And what we see here, for example, the HALU, which falls in this category is between 5 and 20% enrichment, the U-235. Naturally, occurring uranium is less than 1%. It's usually about 0.7% per mass. So that is the level of uranium when it comes to enrichment, right. Existing reactors are usually less than, they use about, that's the low enriched uranium, usually about less than 20%. HALU is kind of like the U-235, those are the advanced reactors and nuclear thermal proportion rockets. Those are anywhere between 5 and 19.75. So they're already form a proportion of those, like low enriched uranium reactors. Now, something is more than 20%, those are the highly enriched uranium fuel. That's usually part of naval reactors. Usually, you would just find the nuclear subs and nuclear aircraft carriers or any kind of naval vessels. That's usually slightly more enriched. And that, of course, is like a longer life with a higher burn rate. So a lot of cases that that's spent fuel usually has enough uranium that's unburned, that can still be refined and used to create HALU at that point. We'll get into more on that later. So what's the purpose of all this? What's the benefit with this HALU fuel? Well, part of it involves being able to utilize smaller designs. Again, the SMRs, right, which is really what the goal we're looking at. The other interesting thing here is that it also, the core of these devices, it extends their useful life, right, part of that. And then another one is, of course, increasing fuel efficiency. So with higher enrichment, that's higher than typical low-rich uranium, but lower than the naval reactors. Of course, enriching uranium takes a long time. It's very resource-heavy. So this is kind of like the nice little in-between sweet spot that we can use for this size of reactor, right? And of course, ultimately, there's a lot less waste in this case. And so again, part of that is usually involves, we have a process, whether it's chemical, which is recycling government-owned HALU, which is the highly enriched uranium coming from naval reactors. And then we convert that to HALU. That's one process. The other one is actually like scratching the bottom enrichment. That requires the use of typical gas and refuges to separate uranium isotopes by weight to produce a higher percentage of U-235 in the uranium. Each has their advantages and disadvantages. And of course, each varies in cost. And the other issue is that you're not going to have a lot of HALU available to convert that to HALU at some point. And not to mention the fact that a lot of the fuel that we were using everywhere was coming from Russia. And during this whole conflict that began with the Ukraine, of course, that access to that supply has dwindled. So then again, we have that. We have that problem to contend with as well. So yeah, that's also spurred on the desire to create our own high assay and low enrichment uranium fuels for our new reactors. Next slide, please. So here we go with the question. So general HALU question, right? So what is HALU? I think we covered that a little bit before. It's the high assay, low enrichment uranium. So enriched at the concentration of the fissile isotope uranium-235 or U-235 is between 5 and 20 percent, right? So in this case, and we talked about earlier, the natural uranium is less than 1 percent of U-235. Typical reactors between 3 and 5, U-235 with the uranium enriched of 20 percent or greater, of course, is usually highly enriched, and that's usually used in ships, right? Usually nuclear vessels. So fuels that use HALU also refer to as HALU-containing fuel. Now, mind you, everything I'm reading here that I'm reporting, I'm kind of adding my own little summary of it. It's available on the website that I've posted at the bottom of this link. So again, all of this is like a polar domain. It's available and you can research it for yourselves. I'm just going to summarize it for all of you. So the next question is, what is HALU used for, right? So we're talking about the different types. We went over that. But again, the whole purpose of this really is to apply that in advanced nuclear reactors and that a lot of those are going to be the SMRs and maybe even the microreactors, right? So traditionally, these HALU fuels were actually used for producing isotopes for medical use. So this definitely already has a commercial application. It just hasn't been for like generating power, right? The other thing is some operating research and test reactors already use HALU-containing fuel. So, and again, one of them was, we talked about in one of the previous episodes, discuss that when it came to, it was an NREL or Idaho National Labs that they already have one launched. The thing, remember, is developers have proposed using HALU and a fuel for molten salt reactors or in the trisal fuel, right? Which is another type of rods that they're using in some of these reactors. So using such a fuel may allow for smaller designs that produce more power per unit of volume. So also, developers expect that HALU would allow their systems to be optimized for smaller reactor cores, longer core lines, and we talked about all this earlier, right? So again, the whole point here is that it'll reduce operating costs, make the barrier of entry a lot lower. More importantly, you can have a lot of these, like, smaller sites installed everywhere and they'll be secured and won't require personnel to be at the site. It'll just be something that's secure remotely and accessible, perhaps even very deep in the remote communities. So that'll be definitely helpful. And of course, we'll get far better use of that fuel as opposed to conventional nuclear reactors, which are usually deployed at a very high scale, right? Now, the next question is who makes HALU? So right now in the U.S., we got two different companies that have the NRC licenses and to do this. And one of them on their sites is the Centros Energy. They make about 600 kilograms of HALU uranium. They can't, that's their capacity at this point, and they can enrich that up to 19.75 percent enrichment, right? And of course, and also the Louisiana Energy Services, they produce HALU with a 235 enriched up to 5.5 percent. So you got the 5.5 percent enrichment and then you got the 19.75 percent enrichment. So Centros Energy and Louisiana Energy Services. So those are the ones that have the current licensing to develop this fuel. Now, how is HALU produced, right? There are two ways that we talked about earlier. You can either refine it from scratch or you can go ahead and recycle the spent HALU fuel, which is high enrichment fuel, which comes out of like naval applications. So those are the different types that you can actually use that. And of course, it's downblending uranium or greater to 235 concentration to lower enriched material. For example, Centros and Louisiana Energy Services are licensed by an RCD produced HALU using gas centrifuges. US Department of Energy plans to downblend high enriched uranium, that's the naval stuff with current lower enriched uranium to produce HALU. So the commercial applications are going to refine it, whereas the DOE is going to downblend it using the naval materials, right? So as a publication, is HALU using existing commercial reactors? No, not right now. There is a test reactor currently, as I talked about earlier, but right now those R&D reactors are the ones that are currently using that. Now, of course, we don't know what's happening in military installations. I'm not going to speculate, but usually those are way ahead of what these test reactors are doing in so many places. But I'm not going to speculate. Next slide, please. So who licenses HALU? Of course, we talked about that earlier. This is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And they also, they license the commercial production, the use, the storage, transportation, and also the waste handling, right? And then, of course, the DOE can perform downblending, of course, in government owned uranium and its facilities under its own authority. So inevitably, the government here had to step in and get involved because of the scale, the price, the cost of developing this, along with the development of a reactor, a unified design, or standardized design that everybody can get behind and build. Again, we're facing issues with supply chain management and in this global supply chain that becomes a challenge when it comes to making these things more affordable and cost effective to do. Okay, next one. Is the NRC prepared to license HALU? And their answer is yes. The NRC is leveraging the, so they had their current experience and their current infrastructure and their current procedure or process long-term to be able to manage this new type of fuel. So for them, this should not be an issue. The interesting thing as well is that they will be, of course, highly engaged in the R&D process of this, but they're definitely ready to license this particular type of fuel. Next question. Has the NRC reviewed any HALU-related licensing applications? And the answer is, of course, the NRC has reviewed HALU-related license. Yes. They wish to get a compliance, I'm sorry, certificate of compliance for a transportation package that can transport tri-structural, so tri-structural, tri-structural isotropic particle fuel that includes uranium enriched to higher than 5% uranium, right? So yes, and they also awarded that to Centrus Energy, which will produce HALU-enriched at 19.75. Okay, so that's already going on the way. The next slide, please. If we're going to a HALU safety question, this is all right. So how will the NRC know if HALU and HALU containing fuel is safe? And they're doing it by the same process that they've done with other fuels in the past, right? They already have existing, the NRC already has existing regulations containing title time of the Court of Federal Regulations to provide reasonable assurance of adequate protection of public health and safety, right? So yes, they have undergone their existing procedures to be able to declare this as safe as any other nuclear fuel has been declared safe in the past, right? So the answer is yes. The next question is, is the NRC actively engaging stakeholders regarding HALU? According to the NRC's answer, it's like, yes, the NRC is actively engaging with a broad range of stakeholders to better prepare to review future applications related to commercial HALU use, right? So yes, they've engaged in DOE, they've engaged international partners, and they've engaged, of course, they're engaged with different labs, right? Idaho National Labs, NREL, and then a few others, right, to be able to actually work on this. The NRC also takes part in meetings with stakeholders to understand the industry's near and long-term plans for the HALU use and non-light water reactor. So again, a lot of this is available in the NRC website. An important thing to note here is that this is going to take, in order to meet our climate goals and in order to have a reliable grid, right? We just can't rely on solar and battery and wind, but at the same time, we have to get away, transition away from some of these fossil fuels. And right now, the only good option right now seems to be nuclear, but again, it's the scale, which is what makes it really, really challenging in this case, right? All right, next slide, please. Okay, so HALU research implementation and application questions. So first question here is, does the NRC have to make any changes to the regulations to allow licensees to use HALU, right? And then basically, they say that no, they determined that it is sufficient to review applications to and appropriately and license the safety of HALU for concepts and designs that are currently anticipated. Further, as with any new tech being submitted to the NRC for review, the NRC is prepared to establish new under refining system regulatory requirements and a timely manner of concepts, specific heavy features warranted. So do they have to make any changes? They say they don't anticipate any, but if they need them to, they're ready to do that. So in that case, that's kind of the best answer they have. So they may need to make some changes regarding the fact that this is a new kind of fuel with a new kind of reactor, but at the same time, they have a lot of existing infrastructure when it comes to managing this sort of procedural documentation to handle this kind of fuel. Next question is, how does the NRC assess when to conduct potential research related to HALU and HALU-containing fuel? So they're already doing that as it is, right? So the NRC staff is practically assessing anticipated needs and pursuing research activities to ensure the staff is ready to effectively review license applications, right? So they're already engaging that. And when we saw in our last episode, I think we talked about how they now have like commissioned that this new test reactor, they're already running, we're just going to use this fuel. So that's definitely something that they're already doing. Okay. The next question is, how is the NRC using information for the Department of Energy and its research in this area? So interesting question here. So the NRC is coordinating with DOE on research through the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear. Its acronym is called Gain Initiative to Investigate Criticality Safety Issues related to Shipments of Higher Enriched Uranium, right? Uranium hexafluoride, which is one form of HALU. This research will evaluate the availability of critical experiments and use configurations similar to this. So in other words, right? They are definitely sharing this information and working together. And this is at least two of maybe five agencies that are involved in this whole project. I'll call it a project or an initiative to bring nuclear energy to the forefront of our climate change initiatives. So what is the next? Are there any other medical uses for HALU and yes, medical isotope production, as we said earlier, medical isotope production facilities may use HALU to produce isotopes to use to diagnose and treat certain diseases. That's already in the works. It has been in the works for a while before we began using this as a fuel. Next slide, please. Okay. Now HALU and international partnerships. Is the NRC working with international partners? And the answer is yes. The NRC is actively engaged with international partners. They are looking at the Transport Safety Standards Committee, the TRAN-C and the IAEA. The NRC has been engaging with TRANSEC about any changes to international standards that may be necessary for transportation of advanced nuclear fuels. So far, none have been identified. In addition, the NRC participates in various IAEA requirements. So in other words, they're out there engaging. They're looking for partnerships. They haven't had any yet. Like what I was saying earlier, nuclear fuel up until recently was being sourced out of Russia in a lot of cases. So that presented a problem as you can imagine. But in this case, yes, they have a number of different agencies or different partnerships. International, hopefully are allies that are going to be participating in this particular initiative. Because it's not just us as a nation, but it's a whole group of allied nations that are really looking towards making a change when it comes to this technology. And hopefully move forward, right? Also, the Nuclear Energy Agency, right? It's a committee on safety and nuclear installations working as a working group, right? And they work on fuel cycle safety. So they are also engaged with that agency as well to make sure that the standards that we're using are all consistent. Especially if we intend to have a supply chain that's international, especially on this type of design. And these SMRs that are hopefully be deployed not just throughout the country, but maybe in many different parts of the world. That'll definitely make a change when it comes to bringing accessibility to nuclear power or energy. And then, of course, that means really it's producing clean, carbon-free energy to everybody out there. So again, that is like a little brief synopsis on what the NRC and the Department of Energy has to say about HALO. And hopefully this particular discussion was helpful. If, by the way, I want to encourage you, if you have any comments, please go ahead and write them below. If you'd like to video, please click like and subscribe. Also, I will try and respond to comments in the videos and I certainly look forward to answers. And if you have any experts out there that want to join another episode and kind of like share some of the information and knowledge about this particular fuel and this particular technology for generating clean energy, I would definitely welcome that and feel free to reach out so we can arrange that. Anyway, I think that is all the time we have for today. I want to thank you all for joining and I encourage you once again to like and subscribe and follow the Think Tech Hawaii for their multitude of great educational videos and great discussion on topics that affect not just energy, but also a whole wealth of other different areas in our in our world, not just Hawaii, but the rest of the world. Thank you again. Have a great evening and we'll talk again soon.