ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2026
Nuclear Technology
September 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
August 2026
Latest News
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.
Akio Yamamoto, Hiroshi Hashimoto
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 136 | Number 2 | October 2000 | Pages 247-257
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE00-A2155
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Temperature parallel simulated annealing (TPSA) was applied to in-core fuel management optimizations, and the optimization performance was evaluated by comparing TPSA with traditional simulated annealing (SA). The TPSA method is an optimization algorithm that is based on SA, but has several distinguishing features: an automatic temperature annealing schedule, time homogeneity, and a significant affinity with parallel execution. The calculation results of a test problem revealed that TPSA was superior to traditional SA in terms of detailed loading pattern optimizations. The reason for this is that the TPSA temperature annealing schedule can effectively avoid local optima by repeating a cooling and heating cycle automatically.