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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.
M. E. Rensink, T. D. Rognlien, C. E. Kessel
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 8 | November 2019 | Pages 959-972
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1643686
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The viability of using liquid-lithium walls for the divertor and main chamber surfaces for a Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF) is analyzed from the point of view of the edge-plasma region that separates the hot core plasma from the surrounding material walls. The edge plasma is modeled by the UEDGE two-dimensional multifluid transport code that evolves equations for the density, momentum, and temperature of a 50%/50% mixture of deuterium-tritium (DT) ions, impurity ions, and electrons. Neutral DT and impurity gases are represented by neutral fluid equations. The primary inputs from the FNSF design are the magnetic configuration, plasma-facing-surface locations, core plasma exhaust power, and core boundary DT ion density. Lithium sources and sinks due to evaporation and condensation on the plasma-facing surfaces are parameters. The results show that a highly radiating divertor plasma, detached from the divertor plates, can be formed where >90% of the exhaust power is radiated by lithium with a broad deposition profile on plasma-facing surfaces that yields peak heat fluxes in the range of 2 MW/m2. The detached configuration is dominated by lithium plasma in the divertor and by hydrogen plasma upstream adjacent to the core boundary. A nonnegligible low level of lithium is found upstream at the outer midplane, typically in the range of 3% to 20%, that represents a potential core DT fuel dilution problem. An important physical mechanism is the collisional thermal force acting between ion species that can push impurities upstream along the magnetic field lines. Results show that the effect of reduced DT recycling at lithium surfaces due to hydride formation does not significantly affect the stability and radiative efficiency of the lithium divertor.