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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Latest News
Securing the advanced reactor fleet
Physical protection accounts for a significant portion of a nuclear power plant’s operational costs. As the U.S. moves toward smaller and safer advanced reactors, similar protection strategies could prove cost prohibitive. For tomorrow’s small modular reactors and microreactors, security costs must remain appropriate to the size of the reactor for economical operation.
Hangbok Choi, Won Il Ko, Myung Seung Yang
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 135 | Number 2 | June 2000 | Pages 150-164
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE00-A2131
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method to reduce the fuel composition heterogeneity effect on the core performance parameters has been studied for DUPIC fuel, which is made from spent pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel by a dry refabrication process. This study focuses on the reactivity control method, which uses slightly enriched, depleted, or natural uranium to minimize the additional cost on the manufacturing of DUPIC fuel, when adjusting the excess reactivity of the spent PWR fuel. To reduce the variation of isotopic composition of the DUPIC fuel, interassembly mixing operations were assumed to be carried out three times. Three options have been considered: reactivity control by slightly enriched and depleted uranium, reactivity control by natural uranium for high-reactivity spent PWR fuels, and reactivity control by natural uranium for intermediate-reactivity spent PWR fuels. The results of this study have shown that the reactivity of DUPIC fuel can be tightly controlled with the minimum amount of fresh uranium feed. For reactivity control by slightly enriched and depleted uranium, all spent PWR fuel can be utilized as DUPIC fuel, and the fraction of fresh uranium feed is 3.4% on the average. For reactivity control by natural uranium, ~88% of spent PWR fuel can be utilized as DUPIC fuel when intermediate-reactivity spent PWR fuels are used, and the amount of natural uranium feed needed to control the DUPIC fuel reactivity is negligible.