Seeking Safer Nuclear Fuel, Scientists Create Perfect Uranium Crystals

Eric Burgett is on a quest to create pure, single crystals of uranium that he believes could be the future of nuclear fuel.

In a trial run, the Idaho State University professor and his research team have successfully manufactured cerium oxide crystals in the lab; cerium can function as a non-radioactive surrogate for uranium and plutonium. Moving on from the cerium trial run, Burgett's lab produced its first uranium oxide crystal this June.

Crystalized uranium oxide, Burgett says, is superior to the uranium oxide fuel pellets that are currently the mainstay of nuclear fuel in the United States. The fuel pellets are composed of multiple crystallites randomly mixed together, with a monostructural make up that varies from pellet to pellet. The variance in the current state of fuel pellets makes studying the fuel and predicting what happens in a nuclear reactor difficult.

"About 95 percent of the crystals that make up the uranium oxide are randomly oriented. There is no order," Burgett said in a statement. "How can you accurately model and simulate a fuel pellet crystal with randomness? With the crystals we are growing, you can. We will be able to examine a single uranium or uranium oxide crystal and how heat moves through it. That gives us a baseline to understand what happens to the material as it gets more complex and the crystal structure changes."

Making the crystals required crushing existing nuclear fuel pellets, then heating them in a furnace until crystals begin to form. The process takes days, but when its finished the result is a crystal with its atoms perfectly aligned. Perfect specimens will allow Burgett and other researchers to better understand how heat moves through the crystal structure and how the material behaves.

"The goal is to build a safer fuel for a safer reactor," Burgett said.