en.Wedoany.com Reported - The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced four voucher recipients for the third round of Fiscal Year 2026 funding through its Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) program. Voucher recipients do not receive direct cash awards; instead, funding is provided to DOE laboratories to assist companies in overcoming key technical and commercialization challenges. All awardees are required to contribute at least 20% cost share, which may be provided as in-kind contributions.
Aalo Atomics (Austin, Texas) will receive support from Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to develop a modified version of the EMRALD software to enhance economic generation risk analysis and design decision-making capabilities. The company is developing the Aalo-1 advanced microreactor, planned for modular deployment, and will use INL's Event Modeling Risk Assessment using Linked Diagrams (EMRALD) software for Generation Risk Analysis (GRA) to optimize reactor availability, economics, and safety. Current EMRALD capabilities need enhancement to better represent evolving reactor design details required for uncertainty quantification, automated sensitivity analysis, and engineering trade-off decisions. This project will improve advanced reactor economics, plant availability, and safety analysis capabilities by enabling more complex uncertainty and sensitivity analyses during the reactor design process. The enhanced EMRALD tool will help reduce regulatory uncertainty, support more economically competitive microreactor deployment, and enable dispatchable nuclear energy systems beyond traditional baseload power generation.
OrganiCore Nuclear (New York) will collaborate with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) on design-enabling nuclear data evaluations. The company is developing an innovative small modular reactor (SMR) utilizing low-pressure organic cooling, separate water moderation, and commercially available low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel, aiming for rapid deployment and achieving large light water reactor economics at microreactor scale. High-fidelity nuclear data, particularly Thermal Scattering Law (TSL) data describing low-energy neutron interactions, is critical for accurate reactor physics modeling, safety analysis, and licensing applications. However, no evaluated TSL data currently exists for the organic coolant used in OrganiCore's design. OrganiCore will leverage ORNL's Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), machine learning-based molecular dynamics capabilities, and prior successful TSL validation work for reactor materials to generate and validate the required nuclear data.
Raven-Flint Nuclear Corp (Idaho Falls) will partner with INL to conduct domestic uranium conversion via the Zero-F2 process. The company is developing a novel uranium conversion process that eliminates the need for elemental F2 and F2-derived fluorinating agents, but remaining technical challenges include establishing pilot-scale mass balance, material control and accounting (MC&A), and flow characterization methods suitable for NRC licensing applications. The United States currently relies on a single commercial uranium hexafluoride (UF6) conversion facility, and all Western alliance conversion plants depend on elemental fluorine (F2) chemistry, introducing significant cost, safety, licensing, and supply chain vulnerabilities. This project will develop integrated mass balance, MC&A, and supporting flow characterization methods for the Raven-Flint pilot plant, leveraging INL's operational-scale UF6 conversion expertise and advanced radiochemical and analytical capabilities. The project will establish a new domestic UF6 conversion pathway that eliminates dependence on elemental fluorine, reducing capital costs, operating costs, hazardous material inventories, and licensing complexity for future conversion facilities.
Srijan LLC (College Station, Texas) will collaborate with Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) to overcome material growth barriers in semiconductor neutron detector manufacturing for novel advanced nuclear power plants. The company is developing N800 semiconductor neutron detectors using hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) to enable high-temperature neutron detection for advanced reactors. Current hBN materials contain carbon impurities that severely degrade charge collection efficiency, hinder reliable neutron detection performance, and prevent progress beyond proof-of-concept stages. Srijan will grow hBN thick films using carbon-free precursors such as boron tribromide and borazine to achieve the material quality required for neutron detector applications. SNL possesses specialized chemical vapor deposition (CVD) reactor facilities and carbon-free hBN epitaxial growth expertise that are not commercially available. This project will enable next-generation neutron detectors to operate at temperatures up to 800°C, significantly exceeding the limits of He-3 detectors and scintillators currently used in advanced reactors. Compact, high-temperature-resistant N800 detectors can improve reactor safety through real-time neutron flux monitoring and autonomous reactor control, while reducing instrumentation complexity and costs for advanced reactor systems.
