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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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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Latest News
X-energy receives federal tax credit for TRISO fuel facility
Advanced reactor company X-energy has been awarded $148.5 million in tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act for construction of its TRISO-X fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Temitope A. Taiwo, Taek K. Kim, Roald A. Wigeland
Nuclear Technology | Volume 194 | Number 2 | May 2016 | Pages 127-135
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-119
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
As part of a nuclear fuel cycle evaluation and screening (E&S) study, widely ranging thorium fuel cycle options were evaluated, and their performance characteristics and challenges to implementation were compared to those of other nuclear fuel cycle options based on criteria specified by the Nuclear Energy Office of the U.S. Department of Energy. The evaluated nuclear fuel cycles included the once-through, limited, and continuous recycle options using critical or externally driven nuclear energy systems. The E&S study found that the continuous recycle of 233U/Th in fuel cycles using either thermal or fast reactors is an attractive promising fuel cycle option with high effective fuel resource utilization and low waste generation, but they did not perform quite as well as the continuous recycle of Pu/U using a fast critical system, which was identified as one of the most promising fuel cycle options in the E&S study. This is because compared to their uranium counterparts, the thorium-based systems tended to have higher radioactivity in the short term (~100 years postirradiation), because of differences in the fission product yield curves, and in the long term (100 000 years postirradiation), because of the decay of 233U and daughters, and because of higher mass flow rates due to lower discharge burnups. Some of the thorium-based systems also require enriched uranium support, which tends to be detrimental to resource utilization and waste generation metrics. Finally, similar to the need to develop recycle fuel fabrication, fuels separations, and fast reactors for the most promising options using Pu/U recycle, the future thorium-based fuel cycle options with continuous recycle would also require such capabilities; however, their deployment challenges are expected to be greater since past development of such facilities has not reached a comparable level of maturity.