The Fuel Frontier | Indiana Century S1E17

The United States is dependent on foreign sources for nuclear fuel. We import most of our uranium. We depend on foreign enrichment. Russia is currently the only commercial supplier of HALEU, the fuel needed for most advanced reactors. That is a national security vulnerability.

Indiana can fix it.

In this episode, host Kory walks through the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining to enrichment to fabrication. He explains what HALEU is, why it matters, and how the Indiana Nuclear Fuel Campus in the Fishers-Noblesville corridor could break the Russian monopoly and restore American sovereignty over its own fuel supply.

But the episode goes further. The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), developed at Argonne National Laboratory in the 1980s and 1990s, is a fast reactor that can burn spent nuclear fuel as fuel. Most reactors today use about one percent of the energy in uranium. The rest becomes "waste." The IFR can burn that "waste." What remains has a half-life of 300 years, not 300,000 years.

The IFR is a burner, not a breeder. Its conversion ratio is about 0.5 to 0.8, meaning it consumes more actinides than it creates. It is designed to reduce waste, not create more.

The IFR was canceled in 1994 for political reasons, not technical ones. The Clinton administration feared reprocessing could lead to weapons proliferation. But the IFR's electrorefining process kept plutonium mixed with fission products. It was never weapons usable. The science was sound. Politics killed it.

Today, FANCO (First American Nuclear Company) is headquartered in Indianapolis. Their EAGL-1 is a lead bismuth cooled fast reactor with a closed fuel cycle. They want to build an energy park in Indiana. If they succeed, Indiana will have the first commercial fast reactor in the United States.

The episode also covers the national security case. Fast reactors produce high-temperature heat that can power synthetic jet fuel production. The U.S. military consumes 4 billion gallons of jet fuel annually. Domestic, carbon-negative fuel production is a strategic imperative. This is not environmentalism. It is national security.

The featured book is "Plentiful Energy" by Charles Till and Yoon Chang, the definitive account of the IFR program by the two men who led it.

Show Notes

Featured Book: Plentiful Energy: The Story of the Integral Fast Reactor by Charles E. Till and Yoon I. Chang

Topics: Nuclear fuel cycle, uranium mining, enrichment, HALEU, Russian monopoly, Integral Fast Reactor, IFR burner, closed fuel cycle, pyroprocessing, FANCO EAGL-1, Indiana Nuclear Fuel Campus, synthetic jet fuel, national security

Indiana Century link: IndianaCentury.carrd.co

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to the Indiana Century Podcast, hosted by Corey Easterday. Episode 17, The Fuel Frontier. Part 1. The Thing We Never Talk About. We have talked a lot about nuclear power and nuclear reactors on this podcast. How they work, why they're safe, where we can put them, who will operate them. But we have not talked about where the fuel comes from. That is strange when you think about it. We spend hours debating the safety of reactors, the geology of waste disposal, the training of operators, but the fuel itself is almost invisible in the conversation. It's got to come from somewhere, and right now, that somewhere is mostly Russia and China. The United States used to lead the world in nuclear fuel. We actually invented the technology. We built the enrichment plants, we supplied fuel to allies around the world, then we stopped investing. We let the industry atrophy. And now we are dependent on foreign suppliers for a critical component of our energy infrastructure. That is the opposite of sovereignty. Today, in episode 17, we talk about the fuel frontier, where uranium comes from, how it is enriched into reactor fuel, what HALU is and why it matters for advanced reactors, and how Indiana can build a fuel fabrication facility that makes us independent from Russian and Chinese supply chains. But first, I need to tell you about a different kind of reactor. A reactor that changes everything about fuel. A reactor that eats its own waste. Part 2. The Integral Fast Reactor. In the 1980s and 1990s, scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory built something extraordinary. They called it the Integral Fast Reactor or IFR. The IFR was not a small modular reactor, it was a different kind of nuclear technology entirely. A fast reactor cooled by sodium with a closed fuel cycle. Here is what made the IFR different. First, it was a fast reactor. Most of the world's reactors are thermal reactors. They use slow neutrons to split uranium-235. Fast reactors use high energy neutrons. That allows them to split not just uranium-235, but also plutonium and other heavy elements. That is why they can burn fuel that thermal reactors cannot touch. Second, it was sodium cooled. Water moderates neutrons, which means it slows them down. That is fine for thermal reactors which need lower energy neutrons, but fast reactors need a coolant that does not slow down neutrons as much. Sodium works perfectly. It is liquid at high temperatures, it does not corrode, and it carries heat very efficiently. Third, it had a closed fuel cycle. This was the revolutionary part. Spent fuel from the IFR was sent to an on-site reprocessing facility. The usable material was separated from the waste. New fuel was then fabricated. The waste that was left had a half-life of a few hundred years, not tens or hundreds of thousands. The IFR demonstrated something that most people do not understand. Nuclear waste is not waste. It is fuel. The reactor just needs to be designed to burn it. The IFR actually worked. It ran for 30 years at Argon West in Idaho. They completely shut off all the cooling pumps on purpose, just approved the reactor would shut itself down with no operator action. It worked, there were no meltdowns, no operator action, just physics. One important clarification the IFR is not a breeder reactor. It does not produce more fuel than it consumes. It is what is called a burner. It has a conversion ratio of about 0.5 to 0.8. That means it consumes more actinides than it creates. It is not about creating new fuel. It is about consuming existing waste, turning that 300,000 year liability into a 300 year asset. It doesn't require new mining, no new enrichment, just consumption of what we already dug out of the ground. So why are we not using IFRs today? Politics In nineteen ninety four, the Clinton administration canceled the IFR program. The reason was nuclear nonproliferation. The administration was worried that reprocessing technology could be used to make weapons, so they killed the program. The reactor was shut down, the fuel was put into storage, and the team scattered. But the science did not disappear, and the two men who led the IFR program wrote a book about it. That book is Plentiful Energy, and it is the foundation for everything we are about to discuss. Part three. Uranium Mining, Conversion, and Enrichment. Before we talk about the future, we need to understand the present. Where does nuclear fuel actually come from? Step one is uranium mining. Uranium is naturally occurring. It is about as common as tin. It is found in rocks, soil, and seawater. The largest uranium mines are in Kazakhstan, Canada, and Australia. The United States has uranium, but most of our mines have closed. We import almost all of our uranium. Step 2. Milling. The mined ore is crushed and ground into a fine powder. Chemicals are added to dissolve the uranium. The uranium is precipitated out, dried, and packed into drums. The result is what they call yellow cake or uranium oxide. It's called yellow cake because it's yellow. And it kind of looks like cake. The name is quite literal. Step three is conversion. Yellow cake is not ready for enrichment. It must be converted into a gas, uranium hexafluoride or UF6. This is a white solid at room temperature, but it turns into a gas when heated. It is also highly corrosive and chemically reactive. Handling it requires extreme care. Step four is enrichment. Natural uranium is mostly uranium two thirty eight with only 0.7% uranium-235. Most reactors need uranium-235 concentration of 3-5%. Enrichment increases the proportion of U235. There are two main enrichment technologies. Gas diffusion is old and energy intensive. A gas centrifuge is newer and more efficient. Centrifuges spend uranium hexafluoride gas at very high speeds. The heavier uranium-238 molecules move to the outside. The lighter uranium-235 molecules stay near the center. By repeating this process thousands of times, you get enriched uranium. The United States has one commercial enrichment plant. It is in New Mexico, owned by a European company. We do not control our own enrichment capacity. Step five is fuel fabrication. The enriched uranium hexafluoride is converted back into a solid. The powder is pressed into pellets. The pellets are centered in a high temperature furnace. They become hard ceramic discs. The pellets are loaded into zirconium alloy tubes. The tubes are bundled together into fuel assemblies. These assemblies go inside of a reactor. That is the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle. It is complex, it is expensive, and right now much of it happens outside of the United States. If you're familiar with nuclear power, you may have heard the term HALU. It stands for high assay, low enriched uranium. Standard reactor fuel is enriched to 3-5% uranium-235. HALU is enriched to 5-20%. Most advanced reactors, including small modular reactors, need HALU to achieve smaller cores and longer refueling intervals. Here's the problem. There is no commercial HALU production in the United States. At least not yet. The Department of Energy is trying to fix that. They have created a HALU availability program. They are funding demonstration projects, but right now the only commercial HALU supplier in the world is Russia. TenX, a Russian state owned company, sells HALU to the United States. This is a national security vulnerability. The Indiana Century Project proposes a solution. The Indiana Nuclear Fuel Campus in the Fishers Noblesville Corridor, a facility that could fabricate HALU fuel for advanced reactors, a facility that would eventually include enrichment capability, a facility that would break Russian monopoly and restore American sovereignty over its own fuel supply. This is not some sort of speculation, this technology already exists. The demand exists, and the national security imperative exists. Indiana can be the answer. Part five. This episode's featured book is Plentiful Energy, the story of the Integral Fast Reactor by Charles E. Till and Yoon I Chang. This wonderful book by Fast Reactor pioneers Charles Till and Yoon Chang, two of the foundational developers of the IFR during the fabulously productive years of research and development at the Argonne National Laboratory from the 1980s to early 1990s, explains in lucid terms the historical, philosophical, and technical basis for truly sustainable nuclear energy. It's quite a story. There is something here from the non-specialist scientist and engineer, but also for the historian, social scientist, and media commenter. It is wrapped up in a grand narrative and an inspiring vision that will appeal to people from all walks of life. Indeed, anyone who cares about humanity's future and wants to leave a bright legacy for future generations that is not darkened by the manifold problems associated with extracting and burning ever-dwindling and environmentally damaging forms of fossil carbon like coal, oil, and gas. Charles Till was a British-born physicist who led the IFR program at Argonne. Yun Chang was his deputy, a Korean-born nuclear engineer. Together, they built the most advanced nuclear reactor the world has ever seen. And then they watched it get canceled. This book is their account of what happened. It is. First, the IFR solved the waste problem. They demonstrated that a fast reactor could consume its own waste. The leftover waste had a half-life of a few hundred years, not tens or hundreds of thousands. That turns a geological 12,000 generation problem into an engineering problem. Second, the IFR was passively safe. They proved it. They shut off the cooling pumps, the reactor heated up, the fuel expanded, the expansion pushed atoms further apart, reducing the reaction rate. The reactor shut itself down, no operator action, no backup systems, no power, just the physics at work. Third, the IFR was canceled for political reasons, not technical ones. The Clinton administration, and particularly Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, decided decided that reprocessing was too dangerous. They feared that the technology could be used to produce weapons material, so they killed the program. But Till and Chang argue that the IFR's closed fuel cycle was actually more proliferation resistant than the once-through cycle that we still use today. The plutonium in spent fuel is mixed with highly radioactive fission products. That makes it self-protecting. The IFR's electro refining process never produced pure plutonium. It always remained mixed with other elements. Fourth, the IFR could power the world for centuries. Fast reactors can burn uranium-238, which is 99.3% of natural uranium. Thermal reactors burn only uranium-235, which is 0.7%. That means fast reactors get about 100 times more energy from the same amount of uranium. With the uranium that we have already mined, we could power the world for hundreds of years. Till and Chang end their book with a challenge. They say the IFR was the right solution then, and it is the right solution now. The only thing missing is the will to build it. That is where Indiana comes in. Part 6. FANCO and the Return of the Fast Reactor. Remember FANCO, first American nuclear company? They are headquartered in Indianapolis, 20 minutes from my house. FANCO is building a fast reactor. They call it the Eagle One. It is a lead bismuth cooled 240-megawatt closed fuel cycle reactor. This is not the IFR. The IFR was sodium cooled, FANCO uses lead bismuth, but the principle is the same. Fast neutrons, closed fuel cycle, waste burning. FANCO has already submitted their regulatory engagement plan to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC. They are working through the licensing process now. They want to build an energy park in Indiana, a site with multiple reactors, fuel fabrication, and waste processing all in one place. If FANCO succeeds, Indiana will have the first commercial fast reactor in the United States. A reactor that consumes spent fuel as fuel. A reactor that turns the waste problem into a fuel solution, a reactor that validates everything Till and Chang wrote about. And Indiana will have something else. Its own fuel fabrication facility. A place where Halo fuel is made for advanced reactors across the country, a place that breaks Russian monopoly and restores American sovereignty. The Indiana Nuclear Fuel Campus in the Fishers-Noblesville Corridor is the perfect location. Close to Indianapolis, close to Purdue, close to Crane and Grissom, with the security and logistics to handle sensitive nuclear materials. We need to understand that none of this is speculation. It is already happening. The technology exists. The company exists. The location exists. The only missing piece is the political will to say yes. Part 7. Objections and responses. Let me walk through the objections I hear most often about nuclear fuel and fast reactors. Objection 1. Enrichment technology can be used to make bombs. That is true. That is how it is done. Highly enriched uranium can be used in weapons. But HALU is not highly enriched uranium. HALU is 5 to 20% uranium-235. Weapons grade uranium is 90% or higher. The enrichment technology is similar, but the product is very different. And any commercial enrichment facility would be subject to International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. It would be inspected, it would be monitored, and the whole process would be transparent. Objection two. Reprocessing spent fuel is too dangerous. The IFR's electro refining process kept plutonium mixed with all of the other fission products. It was never pure. It was never weapons usable. The Clinton administration killed the program for political reasons, not technical ones. We have already proved that the science is sound. Objection three. Fast reactors are too expensive. The IFR was a research reactor. It was not built for commercial production. FANCO ZEGLE 1 is designed for commercial operation. The costs are projected to be competitive with other advanced reactors. And the value proposition includes waste reduction. If you factor in the cost of waste disposal, fast reactors start to look very attractive. There is also the national security value. A domestic fuel supply is worth paying for. Objection four. Sodium and lead bismuth are dangerous coolants. Sodium reacts violently with water and air. That is true. Sodium fires are very serious. But the IFR was designed to handle that risk. The sodium coant was kept in an inert atmosphere. The reactor building was designed to contain any fire. Lead bismuth is less reactive than sodium. It does not burn. It is also more corrosive. But that is a materials problem, not a safety problem. Both coins are manageable with proper engineering. Objection five. We do not need fast reactors. We have plenty of uranium for thermal reactors. That is true, but the waste problem remains. Spent fuel from thermal reactors is accumulating. Fast reactors can consume that spent fuel. The question is not whether we need fast reactors for fuel supply. The question is whether we need them to solve the waste problem. And the answer is yes. Part 8. The bridge. Of spend nuclear fuel sitting in dry casts all over this country. In reality, that is not waste. It is fuel that is waiting to be used. We have already done the mining, we have already done the enrichment, we have already done the irradiating. The energy is still there. The only thing missing is the reactor that can burn it. Fast reactors like FANCO ZEGO 1 and the IFR that came before it can burn that fuel. They can turn our 300,000-year liability into a 300-year asset. They can generate clean, reliable power for decades without mining a single new pound of uranium. And when the spent fuel is gone, when the last cask is emptied and the last fast reactor is shut down, then we transition to a fully renewable grid. Solar, wind, geothermal, advanced storage, whatever technology is ready at that time. Fast reactors are not the destination. They are the bridge. They solve the waste problem, they buy us time, they generate clean power while we build out the renewable infrastructure we will need for the long term. That is the full vision. Consume what we have already mined, clean up what we already created, then move on. We move from extractive to circular, waste to wealth, from our bridge to full renewable. Till and Chang understood this. They built the IFR to demonstrate that nuclear power could be sustainable. No waste problem, no fuel shortage, no proliferation risk, just plentiful clean energy. They were right then and they are right now. Part 9. Indiana's Role in the Fuel Frontier. So here's where we are. Indiana has the opportunity to lead the fuel frontier, not just building reactors, building the fuel that powers them. The Indiana Nuclear Fuel Campus in Fisher's Noblesville could provide HALU fuel for advanced reactors across the country. It could eventually include enrichment capability, breaking Russian monopoly. It could be the hub of America's nuclear fuel supply chain. Purdue University has the nuclear engineering program to support it. Crane has the security infrastructure. The Indiana Century Corps Energy Corps is designed for a workforce pipeline. The Bank of Indiana could be financing capacity. And FANCO is already here building a fast reactor that could consume spent fuel as fuel. The pieces are all in place. The technology is proven. The national security imperative is clear. The economic opportunity is real. The only missing piece is the decision. Energy sovereignty is not just about generating electricity. It is about controlling the entire system. The fuel, the reactors, the waste, the workforce. Right now, the United States does not control its own nuclear fuel supply. We import uranium. We depend on foreign companies to enrich. We have no commercial HALU production. That is a vulnerability. That is the opposite of sovereignty. And Indiana can fix that. Part 10. Conclusion and Preview. This episode was about the fuel frontier, where uranium comes from, how it is enriched, what HALU is and why it matters, and how fast reactors like the IFR and FANCO ZEGO 1 can change everything. The featured book was Plentiful Energy by Charles Till and Yoon Chang. They proved that a closed fuel cycle is possible. They proved that waste can be fuel. They provided that fast reactors can be. And then politics killed it. But the science did not die. FANCO is bringing it back. Right here in Indiana. The United States already has 95,000 tons of spent fuel. That is actually not a problem. It is an opportunity. It is still fuel. We already mined it, we just need the reactors to burn it. Fast reactors are the bridge. Consume the waste, generate clean power, then transition to renewables. No new mining is required, no permanent waste, just a bridge from where we are to where we need to go. And there is a bonus. Fast reactors produce high-temperature heat. That heat can power synthetic fuel production. The U.S. military is the world's largest consumer of jet fuel. They consume 4 billion gallons every single year. Every drop of that is imported or refined from foreign crude. Indiana can produce domestic, carbon-negative synthetic jet fuel at Crane Naval Base. This is not environmentalism. It is national security. Till and Chang ended their book with a challenge. They said the IFR was the right solution then and it is the right solution now. The only thing missing is the will to build it. Indiana can supply that will. Next week, on episode 18, Waste as Wealth. The economics of spent fuel. Why the federal government is paying billions of dollars in damages, how a consolidated interim storage facility at Crane could generate a billion dollars a year for Indiana, and why fast reactors turn a liability into an asset. I'm Corey.