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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.
H. Takenaga, Y. Miura, H. Kubo, Y. Sakamoto, H. Hiratsuka, H. Ichige, I. Yonekawa, Y. Kawamata, S. Tsuiji-Iio, R. Sakamoto, S. Kobayashi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 50 | Number 1 | July 2006 | Pages 76-83
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1222
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Burning plasma simulation experiments were performed for burn control study on ELMy H-/L-mode plasmas and reversed shear (RS) plasmas with an internal transport barrier in JT-60U. In a burning plasma simulation scheme, two neutral beam (NB) groups were used: one that simulates alpha-particle heating and another that simulates external heating. For the alpha-particle heating simulation, the heating power proportional to the deuterium-deuterium (D-D) neutron yield rate was injected. The behavior of the part of the NB heating simulating alpha-particle heating was varied by increasing the proportional gain relating the applied power to the measured neutron yield rate in both ELMy H-mode and RS plasmas, while the part of the NB power in the role of external heating was held constant i.e., no-burn-control case. Above a certain value of the proportional gain, a runaway effect was triggered where excursive increases in the neutron yield rate and stored energy were observed. With burn control, where the stored energy was controlled at a constant value by a feedback control system using the external heating, the runaway was not triggered, and the neutron yield rate was kept at a constant value in the L-mode plasmas. Zero-dimensional calculation indicated that the runaway triggered by increasing the proportional gain well simulates the runaway triggered by improved confinement. The limitations came from differences between deuterium-tritium and D-D plasmas, such as the dominant reaction for the neutron yield and the temperature dependence of the fusion reaction rate, which were discussed together with improvement on the burning plasma simulation scheme.