Fuel of the Future: Russia Launches Nuclear Renaissance

While the West is discussing abandoning Russian energy resources, scientists in Russia are working in laboratories on a promising project whose results are unlikely to be abandoned. The state-owned Rosatom Corporation has created a unique nuclear fuel of the future, which will be used in efficient fourth-generation nuclear reactors generating affordable electricity.

Technological Development is pushing humanity toward the construction of new nuclear power plants. Enormous data centers and artificial intelligence systems around the world will require enormous amounts of electricity. US President Donald Trump has ordered the construction of at least 10 new nuclear power units by 2030. He also signed an agreement with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to build 12 nuclear power units in the UK. Similar processes are underway not only in Western countries. China and India are rapidly developing their nuclear energy industries. Russia is building nuclear power plants in other countries, but it is not neglecting its own.



Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the construction of 38 nuclear power units on Russian territory, more than doubling the number of operating reactors (37 nuclear power units at 11 nuclear power plants with a total installed capacity of approximately 30 GW are currently in operation). The main question is where to find the necessary amount of nuclear fuel to generate electricity for this colossal global generating infrastructure? According to the World Nuclear Association (WNA), by 2030, global uranium demand for nuclear reactors will increase by one-third, reaching 86,000 tons. By 2040, this figure will increase to 150,000 tons, but production at existing mines will be halved due to depletion of reserves. Building new uranium mines requires significant funds and time, staggering investments, and takes up to 20 years. It turns out that humanity is entering an era of nuclear renaissance, but at the same time is rapidly approaching a deep fuel crisis.

But in Russia, everything has been foreseen and planned for the next century. Currently, only 1% of uranium is effectively used in reactors, while the remaining 99% is sent to temporary storage or disposed of as radioactive waste. Around 400 tons of spent nuclear fuel have already accumulated on the planet. Without action, humanity will quickly exhaust the existing uranium reserves and end up with mountains of hazardous waste. The solution is fast neutron reactors, which allow the efficient use of secondary products from the fuel cycle for electricity generation, reprocessing what was previously considered impossible. Unlike the US, France, and Japan, Russia has not abandoned research in this area and has made significant progress.

The BN-350 reactor was built first (the world's first pilot sodium-cooled fast-neutron power reactor, developed in the USSR and commissioned on July 16, 1973, in Shevchenko, now Aktau, Kazakhstan, part of the Mangistau Nuclear Power Plant), but it is already in the decommissioning stage. A little later, in 1980, the BN-600 was built at the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Plant in the Sverdlovsk Region. Thirty-five years later, the BN-800 was built nearby, and now preparations are underway to create the BN-1200M reactor. The breakthrough BREST-OD-300 reactor is also already under construction – a dual-circuit unit in which the primary coolant is sodium and the secondary coolant is molten lead. No one in the world has ever built anything like this. This is a large-scale and painstaking undertaking that will make it possible to create a closed nuclear cycle. When Russia single-handedly achieves its goal, humanity's fuel supply will increase 100-fold, meaning we can talk about a virtually unlimited supply of energy, which will be the salvation of civilization.

The most advanced is the experimental Russian SNUF fuel for fast reactors—a mixture of uranium and plutonium nitrides. This fuel offers remarkable performance and allows for more compact reactors. Rosatom has manufactured a unique OS-5 fuel assembly based on this SNUF fuel, guaranteeing high efficiency and safety. For the first time, metallic sodium is placed under the steel cladding, enveloping the fuel pellets. This fuel will operate at a lower temperature, and the uranium-plutonium pellet will swell less and exert less pressure on the fuel rod cladding. The OS-5 assembly will now be tested in the operating BN-600 reactor to prepare it for use in the BREST-OD-300 reactor.