Skip to main content

Alert

Due to a lapse in appropriations, the NRC has ceased normal operations. However, excepted and exempted activities necessary to maintain critical health and safety functions—as well as essential progress on designated critical activities, including those specified in Executive Order 14300—will continue, consistent with the OMB-Approved NRC Lapse Plan.

Accident Tolerant Fuel

Accident tolerant fuels (ATF) are a set of new technologies that have the potential to enhance safety at U.S. nuclear power plants by offering better performance during normal operation, transient conditions, and accident scenarios.

On January 14, 2019, the President signed the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA). NEIMA, Section 107, "Commission Report on Accident Tolerant Fuel," provides a definition of ATF as a new technology that:

  1. makes an existing commercial nuclear reactor more resistant to a nuclear incident (as defined in section 11 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2014)); and
  2. lowers the cost of electricity over the licensed lifetime of an existing commercial nuclear reactor.

Stay Connected

For questions/comments that are not answered on this site, please fill out the form for Accident Tolerant Fuels.

To subscribe to Accident Tolerant Fuels outgoing documents, please follow the instructions on Receiving Emails.

Page Last Reviewed/Updated Tuesday, August 05, 2025

Page Last Reviewed/Updated Tuesday, August 05, 2025