Uranium & Fuel

IAEA / Agency Says Progress Made Globally In Use Of LEU For Research

By Kamen Kraev
25 February 2020

Agency Says Progress Made Globally In Use Of LEU For Research
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that almost 3,500 kg of highly enriched uranium (HEU) have been removed from research reactors globally over the last decades, with the active support of the agency.

According to the IAEA, today experiments and research can be carried out using low enriched uranium (LEU), despite the fact that most research reactors were built in the 1960s and 1970s with technology that required HEU

“The international community has successfully provided technological solutions for converting HEU fuel to LEU fuel in research reactors,” said Thomas Hanlon, nuclear engineer expert at the IAEA.

The IAEA said that currently 220 research reactors operate in 53 countries, and 171 of these reactors were built with an HEU core. Seventy-one HEU fuel reactors have been converted to LEU since 1978, while 28 HEU-fuelled reactors have been shut down.

The agency said “work remains to be done” as another 72 research reactors are still powered by HEU, mostly because of scientific reasons.

“It takes a lot of creative engineering to figure out how to achieve a similar capacity for the reactor, using LEU in the same space initially designed for HEU,” Mr Hanlon said.

The conversion of research reactor operation from using HEU to LEU fuels is done to reduce the proliferation risks related to HEU, which contains more than 20% fissile uranium-235.

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