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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.
Wolfgang Hohenauer, Harald Bolt, Jochen Linke, Werner K. W. M. Malléner
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 1 | August 1998 | Pages 18-27
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A50
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To investigate the erosion and redeposition phenomena of fusion-related materials under stationary conditions, actively cooled test limiters were developed for the Tokamak Experiment for Technology Oriented Research (TEXTOR). The test limiters allow experiments under stationary conditions within a plasma pulse length of 10 s. Heat loads of typically 10 MW/m2 are removed by pressurized water; the volume flow is 10 m3/h, the pressure is 15 bar, and the minimum coefficient of heat transfer is nearly 70 000 W/m2K. The limiters were manufactured as low-pressure plasma-spraying thermally sprayed tungsten-coated heat sinks made of the molybdenum alloy TZM. The required properties of the tungsten coating were developed by the use of a statistically based optimization routine. Optimized, actively cooled limiters were successfully tested in Forschungszentrum Jülich's Material Research Ion Beam Test Facility (MARION) with hydrogen beams. Maximum heat loads of up to ~17 MW/m2 were applied without any failure of either the heat sink or the cooling system. The steady state of the surface temperature was measured within 2 s. Analytical and numerical models describing the effects of heat load distribution and spatial temperatures were found to be in excellent agreement with numerical predictions. In an additional experiment, loss of coolant was simulated. Transition boiling was generated, and after repeated heat loads higher than 10 MW/m2, cavitational damage of the heat sink occurred. Concerning the material selection for heat sinks of hypervapotrons and other cooling systems based on enhanced boiling of the cooling liquid, this result might be of special interest.