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Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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Front-end nuclear fuel supply cooperation: Turning allied interdependence into strategic advantage
The global nuclear revival, which is fueled by unprecedented demand for firm, affordable, dispatchable power for artificial intelligence and data center build-out, energy security imperatives, and climate commitments, has exposed a structural reality of the Western fuel cycle: No single allied nation currently possesses the full suite of front-end capabilities. From mining through conversion, enrichment, fabrication, and the emerging deconversion and metallization steps required for reactor fuels, capability is distributed across Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States (collectively, the “Sapporo Five”), as well as a small group of close partners.
M. D. Oh, M. L. Corradini
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 95 | Number 3 | March 1987 | Pages 225-240
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE87-A20452
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A one-dimensional, propagation/expansion model has been developed for large scale vapor explosions based on a fragmentation concept involving film collapse and coolant jet impingement and entrapment. This fragmentation model was combined with the nonequilibrium propagation/explosion model to predict the integral behavior in a vapor explosion such as pressure history and explosion conversion ratio. The model predicts the correct qualitative trends from available explosion data (e.g., the fully instrumented test series at Sandia National Laboratories) as a function of fuel composition, coolant temperature, ambient pressure, coolant/fuel mass ratio, and initial constraint. Quantitative agreement with data is found to be quite dependent on the initial mixing conditions, i.e., coolant vapor and liquid volume fractions in the explosion zone. Some of the predicted trends would change when the scale increases.