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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.
Marco Nassi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 24 | Number 1 | August 1993 | Pages 50-64
Technical Paper | Magnet System | doi.org/10.13182/FST93-A30174
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The definitions and correlations existing between different terms used by physicists and engineers are clarified in order to deal with the assessment of the poloidal flux requirement in a fusion experiment. The theoretical formulation of both the Faraday and the Poynting methods, for the internal flux evaluation, is briefly reviewed. Heuristic expressions that allow estimates of internal flux consumption are reported for the specific case of an ignition experiment represented by the Ignitor configuration. The analytical and heuristic results for both internal and external poloidal flux requirements are checked against numerical evaluations carried out by using the TSC transport and magnetohydrodynamics code and the TEQ equilibrium code. A fairly good agreement between the different estimates is found. This suggests that simple heuristic expressions can be used to evaluate the poloidal flux requirement of future experiments, even if a detailed simulation of the plasma current penetration process is strongly recommended to correctly assess and optimize the resistive poloidal flux consumption. Finally, the poloidal flux requirement for different plasma scenarios in the Ignitor experiment is compared with the magnetic flux variation that can be delivered by the poloidal field system.