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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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NNSA awards BWXT $1.5B defense fuels contract
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded BWX Technologies a contract valued at $1.5 billion to build a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Tennessee in support of the administration’s efforts to build out a domestic supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense-related nuclear fuel.
Edward J. Lahoda
Nuclear Technology | Volume 147 | Number 1 | July 2004 | Pages 102-112
Technical Paper | Thoria-Urania NERI | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3517
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The results of a 2-yr effort to determine the capability of U.S. fuel manufacturers to economically manufacture thorium-uranium dioxide (ThO2-UO2) fuel in plants that have previously only manufactured UO2 fuel with <5% 235U enrichment are presented. It was determined that there were no fundamental obstacles to converting the current plants that manufacture a uranium-oxide-only fuel to a mixed thorium-uranium dioxide fuel. However, the differential costs for manufacturing a 75% ThO2-25% UO2 fuel, with the uranium enriched with 20% 235U, as compared to a 100% UO2 fuel, was between $269 and $291/kg of metal oxide fuel, depending on the manufacturing method used to convert the uranium and thorium feeds to the dioxide powders. More than 90% of this cost was associated with the increased cost of the uranium feed and the addition of the thorium feed. If a 70% ThO2-30% UO2 fuel were used, the differential costs would increase to between $519 and $542/kg of metal oxide fuel, of which >95% is associated with the uranium and thorium feed materials.