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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.
Roger Raman, John C. Thomas, David Q. Hwang, Garrard D. Conway, Francois Martin, Akira Hirose, Paul Gierszewski, Réal Décoste
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 24 | Number 3 | November 1993 | Pages 239-250
Technical Paper | Fusion Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/FST93-A30198
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Reactor particle fueling is one of the issues that remain to be resolved in the development of a tokamak fusion reactor. One of the most promising concepts of reactor fueling is the injection of high-speed compact toroids (CTs). Compact toroid formation and acceleration at the Ring Accelerator Experiment (RACE) device at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has shown that CT plasmoid velocities sufficient for center fueling fusion reactors can be achieved by using coaxial accelerators. The Compact Toroid Fueler (CTF) will inject high-speed, dense spheromak plasmoids into the Tokamak de Varennes (TdeV) to examine the feasibility of this approach as a fueler for future reactors. Here, a conceptual design study of the particle fueler for TdeV is presented. The issues of CTF design that are considered are formation and relaxation of an axisymmetric CT, optimization of accelerator performance to improve injector electrical efficiency, separation of formation and acceleration phases to improve injector reproducibility, minimization of entrained impurities in the CT, and minimization of neutral gas load to the tokamak following CT fueling. The CTF injector will test theories on CT/tokamak interaction related to reactor fueling. Among the eventual physics questions addressed are the multiple-pulse requirements for future injectors, the bootstrap current enhancement factor, CT fuel confinement times, impurity effects, plasma heating, injector electrical efficiency, and the effect of gas load on the tokamak following CT injection.