Technology and System Readiness Assessment for a Nuclear Energy R&D Program

This paper discusses modification of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Technology Readiness Assessment Guide (DOE G 413.3-4A) for use in the Office of Nuclear Energy's Nuclear Technology Research and Development (NTRD) program. DOE 413.3-4A describes an approach for identifying and managing technology risks in large construction projects to ensure technology development is part of the project baseline and technology maturity is sufficiently advanced before including a technology in the facility design. The process includes the identification of Critical Technology Elements (CTEs), followed by in-depth evaluation of Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) and development of Technology Maturation Plans (TMPs) for those CTEs. This approach was augmented for the NTRD program to include System Readiness Levels (SRLs) as a complement to TRLs, and developing perspective tracks to better organize the TRL/SRL evaluations that determine the level of knowledge/maturation of the CTEs (e.g. Experiments & Modeling, Safety & Hazards, Manufacturing, etc.). The augmented approach was tested on two areas of research in 2017 (metallic nuclear fuels and fuel dissolution for recycling) and is now being applied to a complete advanced nuclear fuel cycle (from uranium mining to waste disposal).