Chicago-based Clean Core Thorium Energy (CCTE) has advanced commercial demonstration of its ANEEL (Advanced Nuclear Energy for Enriched Life) nuclear fuel platform through a fuel fabrication agreement with BWXT Canada Ltd. The agreement enables the fabrication of full-scale demonstration fuel bundles at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), bringing together the final manufacturing capabilities required to prepare ANEEL fuel for irradiation in an operating reactor.
The agreement establishes another key element of the manufacturing pathway supporting CCTE’s commercial demonstration programme. BWXT Canada will supply qualified fuel bundle hardware that will be integrated with ANEEL fuel pellets and assembled into complete, reactor-representative fuel bundles at CNL’s Chalk River Laboratories.
This marks a major milestone for CCTE, establishing the complete tripartite manufacturing pathway required to build full-scale ANEEL fuel bundles for in-reactor testing. To move the patented thorium-based fuel from design to physical reactor demonstration, the three organisations have distinct roles. CCTE provides the proprietary fuel design and material specifications, BWXT Canada supplies the structural fuel bundle component hardware under the existing manufacturing quality assurance programme, and CNL fabricates the pellets and handles final bundle assembly at Chalk River.
ANEEL Fuel combines thorium with high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU). It targets pressurised heavy-water reactors (PHWRs) such as Candus, offering unique advantages. It keeps identical external dimensions to standard reactor fuel. It lasts longer and operates more efficiently. It significantly shrinks the volume of long-lived used nuclear waste. The fuel mixture also makes it inherently harder to weaponise.
“Sourcing materials from BWXT Canada represents an important step forward in demonstrating the viability of ANEEL fuel in existing reactor systems,” said CCTE CEO and Founder Mehul Shah. “Their decades of expertise in safe and reliable fuel fabrication, combined with deep experience with Candu technology, combine to build a strong foundation for advancing our mission to deliver safer, more efficient nuclear energy solutions.”
The assembled ANEEL fuel bundles will be used in a demonstration irradiation programme to generate in-reactor performance data that will support regulatory qualification and future deployment across compatible reactor platforms. By leveraging existing fuel formats and infrastructure, the programme aims to introduce thorium-based fuel into the current reactor fleet without requiring major reactor modifications. The collaboration ensures manufacturer’s fuel qualification for commercialisation.
The fabrication programme builds on a series of technical milestones achieved over the past year. CCTE recently completed accelerated irradiation testing of ANEEL fuel rodlets at Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL’s) Advanced Test Reactor (ATR), achieving burnups exceeding 60 GWd/MTU. This is more than eight times the typical discharge burnup of standard Candu reactors. CCTE published a comprehensive peer-reviewed engineering assessment in Nuclear Engineering and Design, demonstrating the fuel’s performance, safety characteristics and compatibility across multiple reactor applications.
Currently, the partners are manufacturing full-scale, reactor-ready demonstration fuel bundles. These will be shipped back to INL’s ATR to undergo a second round of demonstration irradiation testing. This test will replicate exact commercial PHWR/Candu operational geometries. It will push the entire bundle structure past 60 GWd/MTU to provide final regulatory data. Once the full-bundle INL data is secured, CCTE plans a commercial power reactor demonstration. This final stage will validate the fuel inside an operating commercial grid reactor, clearing the path for fleet-wide adoption.
