(Idaho National Laboratory Press Release, March 19, 2026)
By Sarah Lusk, INL Communications
The global landscape of nuclear nonproliferation is evolving, demanding a new generation of experts equipped with the latest skills, insights and capabilities. The Athena Initiative, a U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration program, is at the forefront of this mission. The initiative is designed to build the expertise and infrastructure necessary to safeguard the world from nuclear threats.
Athena was launched in 2022 as part of NNSA’s Nonproliferation Stewardship Program to ensure the United States maintains its expertise and competencies in nuclear nonproliferation. A significant part of this effort involves maintaining capabilities for nonproliferation in irradiated fuel processing.
The initiative involves building and enhancing specialized infrastructure for aqueous processing of spent fuel — processes that use solvents to separate materials like uranium from others containing chemical and radiological impurities. This infrastructure is being developed at the Idaho National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Savannah River National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. It includes specialized hot cells, glove boxes and equipment to safely manage complex aqueous processing procedures and techniques such as fuel and target receipt, fuel dissolution, solvent extraction and ion exchange.
Building expertise
Workforce development is a major emphasis of the Athena Initiative.
“One of our challenges is we’ve lost a lot of senior expertise,” said Kevin Lyon, a senior technical advisor on fuel cycle science and technology at INL.
By creating and sustaining foundational competencies in irradiated fuel processing, Athena ensures that the next generation of nonproliferation experts can meet future challenges.
The program begins with cold surrogate streams —or simplified models — of the fuel process. These models help develop baseline skills in safe benchtop and pilot plant environments so new experts understand aqueous processing of nuclear fuels. As expertise deepens, the work progresses to radiological processing with uranium in fume hoods and enclosure environments, then to transuranic processing in glove boxes, and ultimately to irradiated fuel processing in hot cell environments.
Athena includes rotations at different national laboratories, giving multidisciplinary early-career staff members hands-on experience in aqueous processing. Athena has hosted eight rotations to date, covering fuel dissolution, plutonium uranium reduction extraction, or PUREX, solvent extraction testing and equipment installation and maintenance. INL has hosted four of these rotations, including hands-on experience with a solvent extraction system like the one being installed at Beartooth, a configurable nuclear fuel cycle test bed at INL scheduled to come online in 2028.
Athena scientists can engage with colleagues and visit nuclear facilities, both internationally and domestically. “By physically seeing international nuclear fuel cycle facilities and interacting personally with leading experts from other nations, new researchers gain perspective that is difficult to develop any other way,” said Lyon. “With these experiences, INL staff have expanded their worldview and are far better prepared to innovate, collaborate and execute with excellence.”
Retrieving materials
In collaboration with the NNSA Mobile Packaging Program and the NNSA Office of Nuclear Materials Verification, the National Technical University of Athens in Greece has sent about 1,500 kilograms of natural and low-enriched uranium to the United States.
The Uranium Verification Team is a specialized group with expertise in verifying the quantity and composition of uranium materials in foreign nuclear facilities, while the Mobile Uranium Facility is part of NNSA’s Mobile Packaging Program, which processes and secures fissile materials.
This effort is part of NNSA’s broader strategy to address the urgent need to build a new cohort of nonproliferation subject matter experts.
“The timing was fortuitous, as we were actively looking for relevant materials to enable testing and workforce development for the foreseeable future,” Lyon said.
In Athens, the Nuclear Materials Verification Uranium Verification Team and Mobile Uranium Facility characterized and retrieved 1,555 kilograms of unirradiated uranium Magnox fuel and 71 kilograms of low-enriched uranium oxide.
Most of the uranium metal rods with Magnox cladding will be processed in INL’s Moran test bed facility, a pilot-scale plutonium uranium reduction extraction facility at the Critical Infrastructure Test Range Complex west of Idaho Falls, Idaho. Magnox is an alloy composed of magnesium, aluminum and other alloying metals used as cladding for unenriched uranium metal fuel. The Athena initiative is building a new capability at Moran to remove the cladding from the fuel so it can be used in the facility, which is expected to come online in summer 2026.
The enriched oxide material from Greece has been stored at the Idaho Nuclear Technical and Engineering Center, where INL has reprocessed nuclear fuels since the 1950s. This enriched oxide is being shipped to Los Alamos National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to enable a wide range of multiprogram research and development activities.
Maintaining leadership in nonproliferation
One of the key challenges Athena addresses is scalability. The project team employs data science, process monitoring, material characterization and computational modeling. With specialized instruments designed to function in testing environments at a range of levels, the initiative helps scientists use data analytics and computational modeling to understand how processes observed in smaller-scale settings can translate to larger, more globally relevant systems.
Another significant challenge is detecting and predicting unusual or unexpected changes in processing. Using real-time process monitoring along with artificial intelligence helps teams develop predictive capabilities, ensuring that any deviations from expected processes are swiftly detected and addressed.
Beartooth will enhance Athena’s flexible testing environment for aqueous processing. Experts will use the test bed to support a wide range of aqueous separations. Because of the lab’s adaptable design, it can process various fuel types under multiple chemical separation schemes.
Enhanced instrumentation and monitoring
Enhanced instrumentation and monitoring equipment are fundamental to Athena’s success. These tools will provide the data necessary for Beartooth’s digital twin, a virtual version of the test bed that will operate in parallel with its physical counterpart. The digital twin integrates real-time information to fine-tune new monitoring and safeguard approaches. This will help nonproliferation decisions, material diversion and misuse analysis, and characterizing and detecting nuclear material processing operations.
Advancing the mission
INL’s longtime experience with nuclear nonproliferation and separations chemistry makes it a natural partner for the Athena Initiative. The lab has top nonproliferation experts with experience in nuclear facility inspection, modeling and simulation, material science, physics, and engineering. From developing new technologies for safeguarding nuclear material to refining analytical techniques, INL’s researchers and engineers are at the forefront of the nation’s efforts to maintain national and international security.
With NNSA support, INL is prepared to anticipate and respond to evolving threats and opportunities in the nuclear fuel cycle, addressing nonproliferation challenges today and well into the future. By partnering senior staff members with young professionals from across the Department of Energy complex, the Athena Initiative preserves knowledge and helps a new generation of experts.
About Idaho National Laboratory
Battelle Energy Alliance manages INL for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. INL is the nation’s center for nuclear energy research and development, and also performs research in each of DOE’s strategic goal areas: energy, national security, science and the environment. For more information, visit www.inl.gov. Follow us on social media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X.
