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Fusion Science and Technology
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The busyness of the nuclear fuel supply chain
Ken Petersenpresident@ans.org
With all that is happening in the industry these days, the nuclear fuel supply chain is still a hot topic. The Russian assault in Ukraine continues to upend the “where” and “how” of attaining nuclear fuel—and it has also motivated U.S. legislators to act.
Two years into the Russian war with Ukraine, things are different. The Inflation Reduction Act was passed in 2022, authorizing $700 million in funding to support production of high-assay low-enriched uranium in the United States. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy this January issued a $500 million request for proposals to stimulate new HALEU production. The Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024 includes $2.7 billion in funding for new uranium enrichment production. This funding was diverted from the Civil Nuclear Credits program and will only be released if there is a ban on importing Russian uranium into the United States—which could happen by the time this column is published, as legislation that bans Russian uranium has passed the House as of this writing and is headed for the Senate. Also being considered is legislation that would sanction Russian uranium. Alternatively, the Biden-Harris administration may choose to ban Russian uranium without legislation in order to obtain access to the $2.7 billion in funding.
K. Tomlinson, D. G. Schroen
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 2 | March-April 2013 | Pages 288-295
Technical Paper | Selected papers from 20th Target Fabrication Meeting, May 20-24, 2012, Santa Fe, NM, Guest Editor: Robert C. Cook | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A16352
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Preshot characterization of the thickness and form of material samples in targets for dynamic materials properties experiments presents unique challenges. Because of design limitations, the measurement tools currently used introduce increasing error as samples deviate from perfect flatness or thickness uniformity. Contact measurements such as height gages and micrometers, for example, are insensitive to thickness variations occurring over spatial scales smaller than the contact probes. In addition, they measure thickness but not form and often damage samples. Standard confocal microscopes overcome some of these problems but can only measure form on the side of the sample that they see. Also, by design, they consistently overestimate thickness because form errors on the side of the sample against the reference surface always prevent perfect contact with it. We are developing a technique that may prove to be superior to both of these methods at characterizing both thickness and form of samples with both imperfect flatness and nonuniform thickness using only an interferometric optical profiler, an inexpensive fixture, a gage block, and a commercial three-dimensional modeling software. The end result is a computer model of the actual sample.