ARPA-E Backs 8 Transuranic Fuel Projects, Westinghouse Gets $7M
ARPA-E chose eight HORNIG projects on Oct 29, with awards near $45M of a $50M ceiling. Westinghouse, Oregon State and INL get $7M each; the goal is fuel qualification in under seven years.
Chips & Power DeskEdited by Ege Erten
2 min readAI-assisted
Construction work at an Oklo site, from the company's fuel page. The photo is illustrative and does not show a HORNIG-funded project.
Image: Oklo
Source · Press image from the Oklo website, used for news reporting.
The Department of Energy's ARPA-E agency selected eight projects on Oct. 29 for its HORNIG program, which will fund fuel for advanced reactors made from recycled transuranic (TRU) elements, according to ANS Nuclear Newswire. The awards total almost $45 million against a ceiling of up to $50 million.
The three largest grants are $7,000,000 each: Westinghouse for "PowerBlock," an additively manufactured metallic fuel; Oregon State University for TRU-nitride fuel; and Idaho National Laboratory (INL) for a molten-salt chloride fuel with recycled TRU. Standard Nuclear received $6,999,984 for TRISO particle fuel for high-temperature gas reactors. Oklo received $6,842,989 for U-TRU-Zr metallic fuel for sodium-cooled reactors.
Westinghouse, Oregon State University and INL each received $7,000,000; Exodys received the least, $1,300,792.
Illustration (AI-generated)
The rest went to Texas A&M University ($5,377,799) for a thorium-based molten-salt fuel, Sandia National Laboratories ($3,381,128) and Exodys Energy ($1,300,792). The last two will analyze the other fuel concepts rather than build one.
Why fuel supply matters for firm power
Developers of advanced reactors that data-center buyers are courting need fuel as much as licences. Qualifying a new reactor fuel can take more than a decade. An ARPA-E spokesperson told ANS that HORNIG aims to cut that to under seven years by combining fuel manufacturing, modeling and testing early, and that existing safety and regulatory guidelines still apply.
The feedstock is material recovered from used nuclear fuel, including plutonium-bearing waste elements from weapons production. HORNIG builds on ARPA-E's CURIE program, launched in 2022, which develops ways to recover that material. Only INL, of the eight HORNIG participants, also advanced a project through CURIE, ANS reported.
What each fuel targets
Westinghouse describes PowerBlock as a design aimed at 24-month fuel cycles at thermal power above 4,200 megawatts, for both today's fleet and advanced reactors, per ANS. The company, which said it supplies 40 percent of the global nuclear fleet, is also planning a larger fuel plant, as Voltgrid reported. None of its current supply is metallic fuel.
Oklo's metallic fuel suits sodium-cooled fast reactors such as its Aurora design, though ANS describes that link as an assumption. Standard Nuclear's TRISO work follows a wider push for coated-particle fuel; see the Antares and BWXT TRISO deal and the NRC environmental review of GLE's Paducah plant. Those cover enriched uranium supply, while HORNIG targets recycled transuranic feedstock.
What is not confirmed yet
These are research and development awards, not fuel purchases or reactor orders. ARPA-E's release, as relayed by ANS, gives no schedule for fabrication, irradiation testing or regulatory qualification of any of the eight fuels. ANS reported that current grants total almost $45 million of the program's up to $50 million. The under-seven-years target is a program goal stated by an ARPA-E spokesperson, not a demonstrated result.
Westinghouse's own release on the award did not give a dollar figure; the $7,000,000 comes from ARPA-E's list as reported by ANS. Watch for ARPA-E's project pages and the first irradiation tests to show which fuel forms reach a reactor first.
