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NN Asks: Is the U.S. ready for nuclear construction to accelerate?
Craig Stover
Yes, but . . .
The United States is better positioned today for nuclear construction than it has been in decades. Some of that comes from the experience gained at Vogtle and V.C. Summer. I was part of the team that helped start the V.C. Summer project in 2008, and at that time we were trying to build a nuclear construction workforce from scratch. We learned a lot through that effort, and many of those lessons learned have since been studied, documented, and shared.
The nuclear industry is also benefiting from the wave of investment that started growing around 2020. Over the last five or six years, there has been a serious effort across the country to get ready for new nuclear builds. The U.S. government and the private sector are investing billions of dollars in new nuclear. Much of that work is happening before widespread commercial deployment contracts are signed. This is real, and we need to prepare.
Sümer Şahin, Jacques Ligou
Nuclear Technology | Volume 50 | Number 1 | August 1980 | Pages 88-94
Technical Paper | Nuclear Explosive | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A17072
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Assuming the spontaneous fission neutron level as a neutron source, and using point kinetic methods in the course of the analytical treatment, the energy excursion of hypothetical nuclear explosives with mixed plutonium of various isotope compositions has been investigated. The α-Rossi values for the metallic density of different configurations have been evaluated with multigroup SN methods. Commercial plutonium from relatively low burned-up nuclear fuel, containing 5% 240Pu, is shown to reveal similarities with high weapons-grade plutonium, thus making possible a nuclear explosion (in combination with a sophisticated conventional implosion technique). On the other hand, commercial plutonium from moderately to highly burned up (containing 15 or 25% 240Pu nuclear fuel) will have a small probability for an energy excursion up to 100 tons TNT, even by extremely improved implosion techniques.
