Where O’ Where to Put All of My Old U-235 Rods?

by: Chris Mulkey, COO/Head of Research

As oil prices shrivel, another energy technology may be on the rise, one might even argue it’s red hot. A friend of mine, who incessantly posts about the not-new technology of recycling what most believe is useless/spent uranium, piqued my interest as to why this wasn’t being implemented, given the relative cleanliness of nuclear energy, and the myriad problems associated with its byproducts.

As it turns out, this industry has been quietly marching along, largely impeded by the inability to access spent uranium. Most of our national stockpile of yet-to-be-disposed-of nuclear waste resides in possession of Idaho National Laboratory (until the Feds agree on where to dispose of it). In late February this year, the iron gates to the stockpile creaked open slightly as energy startup Oklo managed to secure the first private access to high-assay, low-enriched uranium (“Haleu”) (read about it here).

Oklo is owner to a whopping 1 patent asset (US2017249999), and yet they will embark on construction of its Aurora reactor, a tiny, unrecognizable version of what we’ve come to think of as a nuclear reactor. The reactor will only produce about 1.5 megawatts of power, but most importantly, it’s highly scalable.

So, what’s going on in the patent landscape? It appears that Atomic Energy leads the pack in terms of filings and grants (though with only about 25 patent families), with an overall publication spike happening around 2016. In terms of content of these applications, there’s a roughly even split between chemistry and mechanical engineering, each perhaps signifying the structure of the reactor and the chemistry behind the reaction, respectively.

Not a huge field, really. Perhaps that’s because of the aforementioned impediment of access to spent uranium. If Okla can do it, I’d imagine this sector might be ripe for explosion. Umm…in a good way, that is.

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