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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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NNSA awards BWXT $1.5B defense fuels contract
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded BWX Technologies a contract valued at $1.5 billion to build a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Tennessee in support of the administration’s efforts to build out a domestic supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense-related nuclear fuel.
M. Segev, A. Misulovin, A. Galperin
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 127 | Number 2 | October 1997 | Pages 238-244
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE97-A28600
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A fuel management scheme is proposed for a twofold purpose: incineration of light water reactor waste plutonium and electricity generation. The scheme is based on a fast spectrum core with lead as a coolant. The core is managed in a three-batch mode, 200 days per cycle. Enriched 10B, in B4C pellets, is used as burnable poison, reducing the criticality drop to just 2.8%/cycle. The latter can be handled easily with a few control rods. The core is flat, with a 400-cm diameter and 90-cm height, to ensure that core voiding results in a criticality decrease. Recycled fuel is recharged into the core after the fission products, but not actinides, have been removed. Equilibrium operation is reached within a short period of 2 yr. In a span of 27 yr, the core will incinerate the plutonium at an average rate of 730 kg/yr, while generating 1000 MW(electric).