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Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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Proving DRACO will deliver
The United States is now closer than it has been in over five decades to launching the first nuclear thermal rocket into space, thanks to DRACO—the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Orbit.
C. S. Eberle
Nuclear Technology | Volume 128 | Number 3 | December 1999 | Pages 341-358
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT99-A3036
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The inorganic and physical chemistry of reactants (e.g., impurities) produced during the reduction of spent light water reactor fuel in a hot cell has been analyzed. Two source terms were identified that influence the composition and quantity of these impurities in the salt matrix. One source comes from the reduction process, which occurs between the fuel and the Li/LiCl salt matrix, and the other from chemical reactions that occur between the hot cell atmosphere and the salt matrix. The spent-fuel-oxide chemistry and energy of formation for the reactants were evaluated. Most of the rare-earth-oxide reactions were not thermodynamically feasible with molten lithium, except when nitrogen was present during the reduction process. A model of the reaction at a vapor-liquid interface was developed and applied to the pilot-scale oxide reduction device design. A predominance diagram for the Li-O-N reactions was constructed to determine the possible reactions during operation of the device, and from these results, the mass accumulation was determined from hot cell conditions.