The Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy has awarded about $2.7 million in national laboratory facility access to 18 projects through the Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) program, Nuclear News reported on Nov. 4. The awards fall under NSUF's Super Rapid Turnaround Experiment category.
The selected teams are led by researchers from 11 institutions. They include three national laboratories, Idaho, Oak Ridge, and Pacific Northwest, and seven universities: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the University of Florida, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Michigan, the University of North Texas, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Oklo, the advanced reactor developer, is the one industry awardee.
According to the report, the projects support deployment of new reactors and continued operation of existing reactors. Materials under study include metallic fuels, structural alloys, cladding, graphite moderators, and sensor materials. Teams will test irradiated materials under different doses, temperatures, exposure times, and manufacturing methods, using mechanical testing, microstructural analysis, and microscopy.
Awardees receive access to experimental irradiation testing, postirradiation examination, high performance computing, and technical and scientific expertise. Super Rapid Turnaround Experiments run up to 12 months, compared with nine months for traditional projects, and receive roughly double the facility access time, which allows larger studies. The first round of Super awards was made in 2024.
The report did not list individual project titles or per-project values. Proposals for the next Rapid Turnaround Experiment round were due Nov. 9.
Source: ANS Nuclear Newswire - https://www.ans.org/news/2026-11-04/article-8555/nsuf-awards-18-super-rapid-turnaround-experiments/