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Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
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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.
Nairi Baghdasaryan, Tomasz Kozlowski
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 3 | March 2020 | Pages 169-180
Critical Review | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2019.1686882
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fourth-generation nuclear reactor concepts are focused on reaching a high level of fuel burnup, high coolant temperatures, and high safety levels (including passive safety systems). A design concept that fulfills these criteria is the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR), which incorporates tristructural isotropic (TRISO) fuel particles for energy generation. Although development and qualification programs of TRISO fuel have shown positive results for their future utilization, uncertain issues related to the modeling of fuel performance still remain. In this paper, we review coated fuel particle performance analysis to demonstrate the current achievements and remaining obstacles in the field. The paper includes a qualitative assessment of different methods/models used for the modeling of important phenomena that occur in the coated fuel particle.