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Division Spotlight
Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
Framatome signs contracts with Sizewell C
French nuclear developer Framatome is slated to deliver key equipment for Sizewell C Ltd.’s two large reactors planned for the United Kingdom’s Suffolk coast.
The agreement, reportedly worth multiple billions of euros, was announced this week and will involve Framatome from the design phase until commissioning. The company also agreed to a long-term fuel supply deal. Framatome is 80.5 percent owned by France’s EDF and 19.5 percent owned by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Zhiwen Xu, Mujid S. Kazimi, Michael J. Driscoll
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 151 | Number 3 | November 2005 | Pages 261-273
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE05-A2545
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Reducing the burden of management of spent nuclear fuel is important to the future of nuclear energy. The impact of higher pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel burnup is examined in this paper from the perspective of its impact on spent-fuel radioactivity, decay heat, and plutonium content. The necessary fresh fuel enrichments to achieve high burnup in PWRs with the same three-batch operation scheme are first computed; then, characteristics of the spent fuel are determined. The increase in decay heat with burnup is found to be generally less than linear. Although each high-burnup fuel assembly would be hotter and more radioactive, the total decay heat to be removed or accommodated in storage is less for the same electricity production. If the time window before 150 yr after discharge can be excluded from impacting a repository, significant savings in its capacity can be realized with high-burnup fuel. The high-burnup fuel is more proliferation resistant because of reduced total plutonium production per kilowatt hour and because of higher content of less desirable plutonium isotopes, such as 238Pu. The fuel cycle cost can be slightly reduced by increasing burnup until it reaches a shallow minimum near 70 MWd/kg. Higher burnups would require one-time changes to the limits on enrichments that can be handled in most commercial fuel fabrication facilities. Changing the waste fee to base it on the amount of radioactivity in the spent fuel would enhance the economic benefit of high burnup.