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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
Standards Program
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Shifting the paradigm of supply chain
Chad Wolf
When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.
The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).
Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.
Technical Session|Panel|Sponsored by IRD
Tuesday, June 15, 2021|4:30–6:15PM EDT
Session Chair:
James K. Jewell (INL)
Alternate Chair:
Brenden J. Heidrich (INL)
Session Organizer:
Staff Producer:
Susan Gallier (ANS)
Idaho National Laboratory held a workshop in September 2020 to provide a snapshot look at current international, in-reactor testing and irradiation capabilities. Gaps were identified, and mitigation strategies and recommendations were discussed. As new material innovations are being developed for in-reactor applications for reactor life extension long-term operation, and advanced reactor technologies, there is an increased need for materials qualification and assessment programs. In-reactor testing capabilities are vital to the on-going success of these DOE-NE programs and initiatives. Beyond performing simple irradiations in test reactors, few facilities exist internationally which can perform instrumented, in-situ irradiations on structural materials, and with the recent shut down of facilities hosted at Halden and NRU (example: instrumented fatigue loop, and in-situ creep), there are further gaps in the industry left unfilled. A new focus is being placed on the use of accelerator-based technologies to fill in some of these gaps, but these must be viewed as supplemental, and not surrogates to in-reactor capabilities.
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