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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.
K. Schleisiek, J. Aberle, Ch. Homann, I. Schmuck, W. Maschek, A. Rahn, O. Romer, L. Schmidt, L. Borms, A. Verwimp
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 128 | Number 2 | February 1998 | Pages 93-143
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE98-A1949
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The aim of the Mol-7C experiments has been to investigate local cooling disturbances in mixed-oxide fuel assemblies of liquid-metal-cooled reactors. The tests were carried out in the BR2 reactor at Mol, Belgium, within the framework of a joint program of Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe and Studiecentrum voor Kernenergie/Centre d'Etude de l'Energie Nucléaire Mol, with the partial support of the Joint Research Centre, Ispra. The test sections consisted of bundles of up to 30 fuel pins with burnups of between 0.1 and 10 at.%. The cooling disturbances were simulated by porous local blockages that were dimensioned such that local coolant boiling temperatures were attained inside the blockage as initial fault conditions. In all the tests, this disturbance led to loss of coolability and severe fuel pin damage; however, its extent and timescales differed significantly, with the burnup of the fuel pins being identified as the dominating parameter. At low burnup, the damage was limited to the blockage zone, and irradiation could be continued at full power. At high burnup, a stepwise further progression of the damage from the blockage into the bundle occurred. The main conclusion from the experiments is that local faults of the Mol-7C type and size in irradiated subassemblies are not self-limiting and require active protection measures, i.e., detection and shutdown. Delayed neutron (DN) detection was determined to be an efficient method to detect this kind of fault: In all the tests, immediately after the start of the damage, DN signals were recorded that were much higher than needed for reliable fault detection. This means that if a similar fault were to occur in a reactor core, detection by DN and shutdown would be possible before a dangerous situation would develop.