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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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ANS joins others in seeking to discuss SNF/HLW impasse
The American Nuclear Society joined seven other organizations to send a letter to Energy Secretary Christopher Wright on July 8, asking to meet with him to discuss “the restoration of a highly functioning program to meet DOE’s legal responsibility to manage and dispose of the nation’s commercial and legacy defense spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW).”
W. K. Ergen, A. D. Callihan, C. B. Mills, Dunlap Scott
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 2 | Number 6 | November 1957 | Pages 826-840
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE57-A35496
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The fluoride of a fissionable material dissolved in molten fluorides of other cations can serve as the fuel of a circulating-fuel nuclear reactor. These fluorides have a slowing-down power about one-half or one-fourth of the slowing-down power of dense graphite. The resonance escape probability depends strongly on the cation but is always less than that of carbon. The consequences of these properties for various reactor applications are discussed. Techniques for critical experiments for molten fluoride reactors have been developed, and the physics aspects of operation of the ARE have been analyzed. Operation of the ARE demonstrated that molten-fluoride reactors have strong negative temperature coefficients, mainly as a result of fuel expansion. The ARE was shown to be very stable and to be a slave to the power load. No Xe135 poisoning was found in the ARE, and the radioactivity of the fuel after removal from the reactor was less than it would have been if all fission fragments had been retained. The loss of delayed neutrons by fuel circulation modified the inhour equation but not the stability of the ARE.