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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.
M. Kwon et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 1 | January 2005 | Pages 17-22
Technical Paper | Open Magnetic Systems for Plasma Confinement | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A602
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The HANBIT device is a simple mirror-type device of which the length, radius, and magnetic field are about 5 m, 0.18 m, and 0.1-0.3 T, respectively, in the central cell. In HANBIT, two antenna systems are used for the plasma production, heating, and MHD stabilization; one is the slot antenna located near the center region with the maximum power of 500 kW and the typical frequency of 3.5 MHz, and the other DHT antenna located near the mirror throat with the maximum power of 100 kW and the frequency of 3.75 MHz. Recent experimental studies in HANBIT indicate that the slot antenna system can produce stable, high-density plasmas in apparently two different regimes; one is the fast wave regime with the ratio w/Wci~2 and the other is the slow wave regime with w<Wci, where w and Wci are the RF and ion cyclotron resonance frequencies, respectively. The possible stabilization mechanism appears to be the ponderomotive force by the fast wave in the regime of w/Wci~2, while the RF side-band coupling force by the slow wave in the regime of w<Wci. A clear excitation of the flute-type, interchange modes with the axial mode number n=0 is observed when the RF power is not enough for the stabilization, particularly, in the slow wave regime. Here, we report the results of these experimental and theoretical studies on the RF heating and stabilization processes by the slot antenna in HANBIT. In addition, we introduce briefly the results of the other on-going research works in HANBIT, which include the beach-wave ion heating experiment using DHT antenna, the pre-ionization experiment using the thermal electron cathode or ECH, and the analysis of plasma-wall interaction and neutral transport.