Standard Nuclear plans TRISO production at two new facilities in 2026

Nuclear fuel manufacturer Standard Nuclear is describing "construction and regulatory approval milestones" for two TRISO fuel production facilities that are both under construction. The company reports that construction is "substantially complete" for both the SN-TN (in Tennessee) and SN-ID (in Idaho) sites and that the Department of Energy has approved the preliminary documented safety analyses (PDSAs) for both facilities.

Standard Nuclear is participating in the DOE's Fuel Line Pilot Program and Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program, and is also among the companies receiving HALEU from the DOE for use in their fuel production or reactor programs.

Opening soon: Standard Nuclear says the identical SN-TN and SN-ID facilities are expected to come on line before the end of the year, with startup, commissioning, and licensing activities continuing over the rest of the summer. Under DOE authorization facilitated by the Fuel Line Pilot Program, each facility could initially produce as much as 1 metric ton of uranium (MTU) of TRISO annually and scale up over time to a collective total of 5 MTU per year.

The output of SN-TN and SN-ID will complement that of Standard Nuclear's existing, operational facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn. (dubbed SN-0), which can produce as much as 0.5 MTU of TRISO annually. The company also has a joint venture with Framatome to build a TRISO fabrication facility at Framatome's Nuclear Regulatory Commission-licensed fuel fabrication site in Richland, Wash.

Standard Nuclear characterizes itself as "the nation's only independent manufacturer of TRISO fuel," and says that in addition to supplying fuel for power reactors, the company "delivers dependable radioisotope power solutions to the space and defense sectors." The company was formed around the fuel fabrication activities of Ultra Safe Nuclear after that company's bankruptcy in 2024; USNC's reactor development work was carried forward by Nano Nuclear.

Modular manufacturing: Standard Nuclear President and CEO Kurt Terrani said this week that the company's "ability to deploy additional production lines rests on the maturity of our modular manufacturing framework, allowing replication of safe and proven systems that allows us to scale quickly."

Terrani added that Standard Nuclear's framework, coupled with support from Idaho National Laboratory, "helped streamline our progress through DOE's rigorous nuclear facility licensing process."