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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
Researchers use one-of-a-kind expertise and capabilities to test fuels of tomorrow
At the Idaho National Laboratory Hot Fuel Examination Facility, containment box operator Jake Maupin moves a manipulator arm into position around a pencil-thin nuclear fuel rod. He is preparing for a procedure that he and his colleagues have practiced repeatedly in anticipation of this moment in the hot cell.
Blair P. Bromley
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 3 | October 2015 | Pages 546-560
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-851
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A study of computational/analytical neutronics and heat transfer has been carried out for different types of gas-cooled fuel bundle lattices that could be used for the sub-critical fertile/fissionable blanket of a cylindrical-geometry hybrid fusion-fission reactor (HFFR) with thorium-based fuels. The HFFR concept envisioned is one with a simple cylindrical geometry, using an anticipated variant of a magnetic mirror to confine a deuterium-tritium (DT) fusion plasma. The annular-cylindrical blanket is approximately 10 meters long and 2 meters thick, and is a repeating lattice of pressure tubes filled with 0.5-meter fuel bundles that are made of (233U,Th)O2, and refuelled continuously on-line, sharing technological features with pressure-tube heavy water reactors (PT-HWR) and the Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor (AGR) in the U.K.. With a 2-meter thick blanket, the average fissile content in the blanket needs to be at least 2.5 wt% in order for the HFFR system to be self-sustaining in power.