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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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
NRC approves V.C. Summer’s second license renewal
Dominion Energy’s V.C. Summer nuclear power plant, in Jenkinsville, S.C., has been authorized to operate for 80 years, until August 2062, following the renewal of its operating license by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a second time.
Dakota J. Allen, Stuart R. Blair, Marshall G. Millett, Martin E. Nelson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 6 | June 2019 | Pages 755-765
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1524228
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This project investigated the use of uranium nitride (UN) and uranium carbide (UC) reactor fuel and compared their performance to uranium oxide (UO2) in a nuclear reactor for space-based applications. As a baseline for analysis, the Prometheus Project reference reactor module was considered: a gas-cooled fast reactor using highly enriched UO2 fuel with 1 MW of thermal power output and a 15-year core life. An estimate of the temperature feedback effect on reactivity was made for each fuel type at the beginning, middle, and end of core life; results for each fuel were compared. This analysis indicates that UN-fueled reactors may exhibit a stabilizing negative reactivity feedback for increasing temperatures and that this benefit persists in the face of fuel composition changes over core life. The benefit of increased uranium loading density was assessed through a quantitative estimate of overall core weight for each fuel. It was found that weight savings on the order of 1000 kg can be realized for a reactor of this size by using either UC or UN rather than UO2.