Lightbridge Receives Notice of Allowance for a Korean Patent Covering Its Mixed-Grid Nuclear Fuel Assembly Design
Key Highlights
- ➤Lightbridge receives Korean patent grant notice covering 17 mixed-grid fuel assembly claims
- ➤Allowed claims broaden South Korean protection beyond rectangular-triangular grid combinations
- ➤Patent covers assemblies for light-water and CANDU-type pressurized heavy-water reactors
- ➤South Korea operates 26 reactors supplying about one-third of national electricity
- ➤South Korea targets nuclear generation rising from 30.7% in 2023 to 35.2% in 2038
Expert Statements
Seth Grae, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lightbridge Corporation
“South Korea is one of the few countries that operates both pressurized water and pressurized heavy water reactors, and it builds and exports its own reactor designs, so patent coverage there supports both our light water and CANDU fuel designs”
Seth Grae, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lightbridge Corporation
“Our 2022 Korean patent protected one specific combination of rectangular and triangular grids. These claims broaden patent protection to include the mixed-grid approach.”
RESTON, Va., Oct. 30, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lightbridge Corporation (“Lightbridge” or the “Company”) (Nasdaq: LTBR), an advanced nuclear fuel technology company, today announced that it has received a Notification of Patent Grant from the Korean Ministry of Intellectual Property (“MOIP”), formerly the Korean Intellectual Property Office, for Korean Patent Application No. 10-2025-7001591, titled “Nuclear Fuel Assembly.” The application covers 17 claims directed to a fuel assembly in which the fuel elements are arranged in a mixed grid pattern that combines two different grid patterns. The patent will be registered upon payment of the registration fee.
The allowed claims describe a fuel assembly in which the outermost fuel elements form a substantially circular perimeter, the bundle shape used in pressurized heavy water reactors, including CANDU-type designs. Each fuel element has a multi-lobed profile with spiral ribs, and the ribs of neighboring elements touch at intervals along the assembly length to help hold the elements in position. Dependent claims cover bundles of 19 and 61 fuel elements inside a circular or twelve-sided shroud, grid patterns that alternate along concentric circles, and assemblies that combine four-lobe Lightbridge fuel rods, conventional pelleted fuel rods, or burnable poison rods.
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