Standard Nuclear
🇺🇸 Oak Ridge, US · Founded 2025 · Active
Standard Nuclear is a US company that manufactures TRISO (tri-structural isotropic) fuel, in which each tiny uranium-bearing particle is sealed inside several protective layers, for advanced reactors. It describes itself as producing advanced nuclear fuel at industrial scale and says its modular production line can switch between different customers' fuel designs with little downtime or cost. It markets the fuel for power generation, military installations and space missions.
- Sector
- Fuel cycle
- Fuel
- TRISO particle fuel, High-assay low-enriched uranium
- Role
- Supplier
Terms
- TRISO particle fuel
- Fuel kernels about the size of a poppy seed, each wrapped in layers of carbon and silicon carbide, so every particle acts as a tiny containment for its own fission products. The US Department of Energy reports that irradiated particles came through more than 300 hours of testing at temperatures up to 1,800 °C with no to minimal damage. That record covers the particle designs, temperatures and burnups actually tested; a claim outside that envelope is not covered by it.
- High-assay low-enriched uranium
- High-assay low-enriched uranium: uranium enriched to between 5% and just under 20% uranium-235, as the US Department of Energy defines it. It is still formally low-enriched, because the international line for highly enriched uranium is 20%, which is why many designs specify 19.75%. The binding supply constraint for many advanced reactor designs. The 5 to 10% part, which carries lighter US physical-security requirements than material from 10% up, is also tagged as LEU+. A developer calling fuel in that band 'LEU' is making a labelling choice, not describing a different enrichment.
Related companies
Sources
- Standard Nuclearoperator
- Aboutoperator
- www.standardnuclear.com/technologyoperator