Radiant Will Work with Argonne in Department of Energy-Funded Project
Radiant awarded Department of Energy GAIN program voucher for research into novel commercial reactor and fuel cycle concepts.
February 7, 2023
February 7, 2023
February 7, 2023 – We’re proud to share that Radiant is partnering with the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory as part of a voucher program provided by the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) program of DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. With this partnership, the researchers at Argonne plan to help industry develop a range of new commercial reactor and fuel cycle concepts with the potential to go beyond today’s traditional large water-cooled reactors and address climate change.
Our team has already kicked off work with Argonne on numerical modeling of heat production and removal in our high-temperature gas-cooled microreactor. Argonne nuclear engineer April Novak, one of the laboratory’s Maria Goeppert Mayer fellows, will help our team create high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics models of the microreactor in shutdown conditions, including its passive heat removal systems. One of these heat removal systems is called an air jacket, which consists of a thin layer of ambient air in between the reactor and the shielding. Since microreactors uniquely benefit from passive cooling, the air jacket modeling work with Argonne will be truly novel and a critical requirement well ahead of any prototyping and testing.
Our team plans to be the first new commercial reactor design to achieve a fueled test in more than 50 years. But achieving full commercialization for advanced reactors will require widespread, ongoing partnership across the Department of Energy and several national labs like Argonne and Idaho National Lab. We’re thrilled about this award because it’s another key step in that direction.
— Doug
Learn more about this award here.
About Radiant
Radiant is a leading developer of advanced nuclear technologies focused on delivering reliable, resilient, and scalable energy solutions that are transportable by land, sea and air. Radiant is committed to enabling a new generation of nuclear applications for commercial, industrial, and defense customers.