First GAIN vouchers of 2025 go to Curio, Deep Fission, Kairos, and NuCube Energy

The Department of Energy's Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) has awarded four fiscal year 2025 vouchers to support the development of advanced nuclear technologies. Each company will get access to specific capabilities and expertise in the DOE's national laboratory complex-in this round of awards both Idaho National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are named-and will be responsible for a minimum 20 percent cost share, which can be an in-kind contribution.

The companies: Of the four companies receiving awards, three are working on fission reactor designs and one is developing a used fuel recycling process.

• Curio Solutions, of Washington, D.C., will collaborate with PNNL to analyze its nuclear fuel recycling process and recommend waste management strategies to close the light water reactor fuel cycle. Curio and PNNL will work together on Curio's NuCycle flowsheet, designed to quantify and classify anticipated fuel waste streams and make recommendations on the waste forms most suitable for each stream. The project results could be used to determine a waste management approach for a pilot NuCycle demonstration in 2027.
• Deep Fission, of Berkeley, Calif., will work with INL to assess the thermal hydraulics involved in siting a microreactor in a borehole 1 mile underground. Together, Deep Fission and INL plan to create an independent system model in RELAP5-3D to evaluate both normal and off-normal reactor conditions. The company will benefit from INL expertise in thermomechanical and thermo-hydromechanical models for deep geological repositories for used nuclear fuel, as well as geothermal applications involving deep hole drilling and heat extraction.
• Kairos Power, of Alameda, Calif., will partner with PNNL to improve monitoring of the chemical composition of salt coolants for high-temperature reactors using either liquid or solid fuels. Kairos wants to extend the range of measurements of dissolved oxygen and corrosion products in FLiBe to include all relevant impurities that could impact system operation and incorporate those measurement methods into their quality assurance program.
• NuCube Energy, of Idaho Falls, Idaho, will team up with INL to assess and optimize the performance of a heat exchanger conceptual design for potential use in a process that converts carbon dioxide gas into solid carbon using electricity and process heat from a nuclear reactor. Demonstration of nuclear process heating is critical to the company's business strategy, and by working with INL the company will get computational analysis assistance to optimizing the coupling of NuCube's current heat exchanger conceptual design with the Noyes Process for manufacturing solid carbon.