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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.
R. Bonifetto, N. Pedroni, L. Savoldi, R. Zanino
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 5 | July 2019 | Pages 412-421
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1602398
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The design of the European Union (EU) DEMO reactor magnet system, currently ongoing within the EUROfusion consortium, will take advantage of the know-how developed during the design and manufacturing of ITER magnets; however, DEMO will suffer some new, more severe challenges, e.g., larger tritium inventory and higher neutron fluence, both having an impact on safety functions accomplished, among the other systems, also by the magnets. For these reasons, and in view of the need to demonstrate a high availability of the reactor (aimed at electricity production), a new, more systematic assessment of the system safety is required. As a contribution in this direction, the initiating events (IEs) of the most critical accident sequences in the EU DEMO magnet system (with special reference to the toroidal field magnets) are identified here, adopting first a functional analysis and then a failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis. In particular, the following are provided: (1) the EU DEMO magnet system is subdivided into functionally independent subsystems and components (e.g., the magnets, their cooling circuits, and their power supply system); (2) the relevant failure modes of each subsystem are systematically identified, together with the corresponding causes and consequences; (3) a list of IEs is compiled, leading to scenarios that may compromise the magnet safety and availability. Finally, the so-called postulated IEs are selected as the most challenging IEs for the safety of the magnet system. This analysis initializes a path leading to a risk-informed design, i.e., the identification of safety issues that could be addressed at the design level instead of introducing expensive mitigation measures after the design completion.