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The busyness of the nuclear fuel supply chain
Ken Petersenpresident@ans.org
With all that is happening in the industry these days, the nuclear fuel supply chain is still a hot topic. The Russian assault in Ukraine continues to upend the “where” and “how” of attaining nuclear fuel—and it has also motivated U.S. legislators to act.
Two years into the Russian war with Ukraine, things are different. The Inflation Reduction Act was passed in 2022, authorizing $700 million in funding to support production of high-assay low-enriched uranium in the United States. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy this January issued a $500 million request for proposals to stimulate new HALEU production. The Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024 includes $2.7 billion in funding for new uranium enrichment production. This funding was diverted from the Civil Nuclear Credits program and will only be released if there is a ban on importing Russian uranium into the United States—which could happen by the time this column is published, as legislation that bans Russian uranium has passed the House as of this writing and is headed for the Senate. Also being considered is legislation that would sanction Russian uranium. Alternatively, the Biden-Harris administration may choose to ban Russian uranium without legislation in order to obtain access to the $2.7 billion in funding.
William D. Langer, Alicia Butcher Ehrhardt
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 15 | Number 1 | January 1989 | Pages 118-126
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST89-A25334
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The theory of carbon transport in a plasma boundary layer is important for understanding the impurity penetration, and carbon and hydrogen recycling, in tokamaks using carbon compounds as limiters and as wall coatings. Neutral carbon kinetics and transport at the edge of plasma devices where chemical release is a source of carbon are modeled. Plasma reactions with carbon and hydrocarbons are important for such modeling, and these collisional processes are summarized. Combining the reaction schemes and kinetics in the DEGAS code makes it possible to treat the neutral transport at the plasma boundary layer. Results of such modeling of the atomic carbon and methane distribution at the edge are presented for comparison with recent carbon probe experiments performed on the Divertor and Injection Tokamak Experiment (DITE). The density distribution of carbon impurities at the edge is found to vary with edge conditions, with that of each daughter product in the breakdown being much broader and deeper than the parent molecule. Furthermore, the energy of the carbon atoms released from methane is considerably higher, on average, than the energy at which the methane is released from the wall or limiter. At high densities recycling can play an important role in the transport, and as much as 30% of the carbon flux might be due to recycling in the DITE configuration. Recycling can also be important for understanding the erosion and redeposition of carbon on limiters, which, while apparently insignificant in the DITE carbon probe experiments, might be important for limiters on the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor.