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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.
Kokooo, I. Murata, D. Nakano, A. Takahashi, F. Maekawa, Y. Jkeda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | November 1998 | Pages 980-984
Neutronics Experiments and Analysis (Poster Session) | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A11963740
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Benchmark experiments on vanadium and vanadium alloy with D-T neutrons have been done at two angles, 0 degrees and 24.9 degrees, using the slab geometry and the time-of-flight (TOF) method. Data were collected for neutron energies ranging from 50 keV to 15 MeV. For vanadium, measurements were made for three slab thicknesses, i.e., 50.8 mm, 1524 mm, and 254 mm, whereas for the vanadium alloy, measurements were made only for 101.6-mm thickness. The measured neutron spectra were compared with MCNP-4A calculations using evaluated nuclear data from the JENDL-3.2, JENDL Fusion-File(IENDL-FF), FENDL/E-1.0 and European Fusion File veraon-3(EFF-3) libraries. The calculated data show reasonable agreement with the measurement, however, some differences are worth noting. Calculations for a slab thickness of 50.8 mm over the energy range from 0.05 to 0.1 MeV underestimate the measurements by about 40% at an angle of 24.9 degrees, while calculations for the energy range from 0.1 to 1.0 MeV, overestimate the measurements by about 40% at an angle of 0 degrees. Calculations made using the JENDL-FF library show good agreement with measurements for energies greater than 11 MeV. Calculations made using the FENDL/E-1.0 library give smaller results than any of the other three libraries in the energy range from 5 to 11 MeV.