ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
Standards Program
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2024
Latest News
Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
Hyung-Kook Joo, Jae-Man Noh, Jae-Woon Yoo, Jin-Young Cho, Sang-Yoon Park, Moon-Hee Chang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 147 | Number 1 | July 2004 | Pages 37-52
Technical Paper | Thoria-Urania NERI | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-30
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Since the thorium-based fuel has many incentives including the reduction of plutonium generation and long-lived radiotoxic isotope production, the research on the use of thorium as a nuclear fuel for nuclear power reactors has been performed and will last for a long time. Focus is on the fuel economics of the thorium-based cycle for light water reactors (LWRs). Analyses show that the neutronic behavior of a mixed thorium and uranium dioxide (Th + U)O2 core in a pressurized water reactor (PWR) will not be significantly different from that of a UO2 core. This implies that homogeneous (Th + U)O2 fuel can be used in PWRs instead of the current UO2 fuel without any significant mechanical modification of the fuel design and without any change in the nuclear design limits. However, homogeneous (Th + U)O2 has not shown any economic advantage over UO2 fuel when current fuel management strategies are used. Thus, alternative applications of homogeneous (Th + U)O2 fuel in LWRs have been investigated to enhance the economics of the thorium fuel cycle. Specifically, thorium-uranium fuel with a 235U enrichment significantly <19.5 wt%, mixed cores of both duplex (Th + U)O2 and UO2 fuel assemblies, and use of homogeneous thorium-uranium fuel in small-to-medium PWRs with a 5-yr cycle length have been investigated. The proposed alternatives result in far better fuel economics than the homogeneous thorium-uranium fuel cycle. However, the proposed alternatives do not show the economic merit of thorium-based fuel options for existing LWRs as compared to the UO2 fuel option. However, the inclusion of spent-fuel disposal costs in the fuel cost estimate makes (Th + U)O2 fuel competitive with UO2 fuel. In the case of a spent-fuel disposal cost higher than 700 US$/kg HM, the long-lived core with better economic potential than the UO2-fueled core may be realized with the homogeneous (Th + U)O2 fuel.