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Division Spotlight
Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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!
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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?
C. Coquelet-Pascal, M. Tiphine, G. Krivtchik, D. Freynet, C. Cany, R. Eschbach, C. Chabert
Nuclear Technology | Volume 192 | Number 2 | November 2015 | Pages 91-110
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-20
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear systems, composed of reactors with varied fuel and cycle facilities (enrichment plant, fabrication plant, reprocessing plant, etc.), are complex and in constant evolution. Since 1985, the CEA has been developing the simulation software COSI to study different trajectories of nuclear fleet evolution and provide technical elements to decision makers. The principle of COSI, including the typical composition of the data set, is exposed. To evaluate as accurately as possible the isotopic compositions of materials, several physical models are implemented in COSI. The main ones, the evolution calculation and the equivalence models, are described in detail. An exercise of validation of COSI carried out on the French pressurized water reactor (PWR) historical nuclear fleet until 2010 is also presented, as well as a methodology for propagation of input uncertainties on COSI results.
To illustrate the possibilities of COSI, the results of different scenarios studied in the framework of the French Act for Waste Management are discussed. The objective of these scenarios is to evaluate the feasibility of sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) deployment to renew the French PWR fleet on different timescales and to analyze the costs and the benefits of different options of minor actinide (MA) partitioning and transmutation. The impacts of SFR deployment on cycle facilities such as the fabrication plant, the spent fuel storage, and the reprocessing plant are minimized. The SFR deployment appears to be feasible with regard to fissile material availability, with an adaptation of fuel cooling time before reprocessing or of SFR breeding gain.
Minor actinide transmutation in homogeneous mode MA diluted in core) and transmutation in heterogeneous mode (in MA-bearing blankets) are compared not only according to their impacts on cycle facilities and on ultimate waste but also according to the reduction of their inventories. The increases in fresh fuel thermal power and spent fuel decay heat due to the addition of MAs in fuels are quantified. The cases of transmutation of all MAs (americium, neptunium, and curium) and of americium only are distinguished. Alternative scenarios are explored to overcome the challenges associated with each option: reduction of the maximal MA content in fresh SFR fuel in the case of homogeneous transmutation and reduction of interim MA storage in the case of heterogeneous transmutation.