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June 16–19, 2024
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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.
W. Ciechanowicz
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 57 | Number 1 | May 1975 | Pages 39-52
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE75-A40341
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The aim of the paper is to show how the complex, overall burnup optimization problem, t subject to the constraint of the desired power distribution, can be solved by decomposition into less complex coordinated subproblems. The solution has been obtained by use of the multilevel approach. The advantage of this approach is that it makes the computer solution of the problem of optimization practical. Two decomposition structures are considered: one for discrete and one for continuous reactor refueling. In the second case we deal with the optimization problem subject to the constraint in a form of an inequality containing a differentiable operator. To solve this problem the generalized Kuhn-Tucker theorem is used. To determine the optimum control of the desired power distribution, the Kulikowski approach is applied. As a result, the cyclic optimization process for both structures is obtained in which the information is exchanged between suitable level controllers.
