Maintenance can mean no more than keeping the status quo. But plant maintenance programs at U.S. nuclear power plants do that and then some. Even the programs are themselves maintained and improved—and so a long-lived nuclear fleet has improved with time. Read on.

From the pages of the September 2023 issue of Nuclear News.

For decades, more energy has meant more fuel: fossil fuels.

But nuclear fuel—unlike coal, oil, or even natural uranium—is a feat of engineering, not a commodity extracted from the earth. Now, “more” means more engineering—to boost uranium density or to close the fuel cycle.