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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
The journey of the U.S. fuel cycle
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
While most big journeys begin with a clear objective, they rarely start with an exact knowledge of the route. When commissioning the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson didn’t provide specific “turn right at the big mountain” directions to the Corps of Discovery. He gave goal-oriented instructions: explore the Missouri River, find its source, search for a transcontinental water route to the Pacific, and build scientific and cultural knowledge along the way.
Jefferson left it up to Lewis and Clark to turn his broad, geopolitically motivated guidance into gritty reality.
Similarly, U.S. nuclear policy has begun a journey toward closing the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. There is a clear signal of support for recycling from the Trump administration, along with growing bipartisan excitement in Congress. Yet the precise path remains unclear.
Massimo Zucchetti
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 2 | August 2011 | Pages 743-747
Nuclear Analysis & Experiments | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12474
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The features of Candor, a study of a compact high-magnetic field tokamak, based on advanced fuel cycle have been examined from a neutronics viewpoint. Activation behaviour, focusing on the Clearance Index of materials after service in a Deuterium-Helium-3 advanced fuel fusion experiment has been investigated, showing the possibility of being declassified to nonradioactive material (clearance) after their irradiation in the reactor plasma chamber wall, if a sufficient (55-70 y) interim cooling time is allotted. AISI 316L, on the contrary, suffers the presence of Ni, N, Nb and Mo. Concerning pure elements, it is of particular interest the high Clearance Index of Copper and the moderate one of Fe.
