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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.
Cong Liu, Bin Zhang, Liang Zhang, Yixue Chen
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 12 | December 2020 | Pages 1175-1201
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2020.1780842
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Obtaining sufficiently accurate geometric descriptions is a crucial prerequisite for reliable particle transport calculations. Conventional transport algorithms on Cartesian grids use a highly efficient sweep technique and numerous mature discretization methods despite their modeling deficiency for complex geometries. To achieve a more accurate geometric description, a cell-based nonmatching Cartesian grid algorithm is proposed on the basis of the multilevel octree architecture. Transport sweep is performed according to the tree branch relationship of nested mesh distributions. The angular flux transmission between discontinuous grids is handled by the flux spatial moment mapping technique, and multiple zero-order mapping schemes are developed, including finite element interpolation, distance interpolation, and exponential fitting methods for treating upwind flux distributions of different relative shapes. The first-order mapping schemes are modified and improved for linear and exponential short characteristic discretization methods. The mapping accuracy is evaluated for polynomial and exponential functions, and a new spatial shape factor is presented for measuring the degree of nonlinearity. The multilevel octree grid (MLTG) algorithm is tested for neutron transport benchmarks, and good agreement with Monte Carlo and standard SN results is achieved. The number of meshes in the VVER shielding model is reduced from 18 million to 2 million using 3-level octree grids with the same geometric description accuracy. Numerical verification of a one-group fixed-source problem shows that 4-level and 5-level MLTG results with proper spatial discretization schemes can achieve relative deviations of less than 3% and 5% for detector region flux, respectively.