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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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Powering the future: How the DOE is fueling nuclear fuel cycle research and development
As global interest in nuclear energy surges, the United States must remain at the forefront of research and development to ensure national energy security, advance nuclear technologies, and promote international cooperation on safety and nonproliferation. A crucial step in achieving this is analyzing how funding and resources are allocated to better understand how to direct future research and development. The Department of Energy has spearheaded this effort by funding hundreds of research projects across the country through the Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP). This initiative has empowered dozens of universities to collaborate toward a nuclear-friendly future.
Daniel Rozon, Wei Shen
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 138 | Number 1 | May 2001 | Pages 1-25
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE138-1-25
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For both pressurized water reactor (PWR) and Canada deuterium uranium (CANDU) tandem analysis, the Direct Use of spent PWR fuel In CANDU reactor (DUPIC) fuel cycle in a CANDU 6 reactor is studied using the DRAGON/DONJON chain of codes with the ENDF/B-V and ENDF/B-VI libraries. The reference feed material is a 17 × 17 French standard 900-MW(electric) PWR fuel. The PWR spent-fuel composition is obtained from two-dimensional DRAGON assembly transport and depletion calculations. After a number of years of cooling, this defines the initial fuel nuclide field in the CANDU unit cell calculations in DRAGON, where it is further depleted with the same neutron group structure. The resulting macroscopic cross sections are condensed and tabulated to be used in a full-core model of a CANDU 6 reactor to find an optimized channel fueling rate distribution on a time-average basis. Assuming equilibrium refueling conditions and a particular refueling sequence, instantaneous full-core diffusion calculations are finally performed with the DONJON code, from which both the channel power peaking factors and local parameter effects are estimated. A generic study of the DUPIC fuel cycle is carried out using the linear reactivity model for initial enrichments ranging from 3.2 to 4.5 wt% in a PWR. Because of the uneven power histories of the spent PWR assemblies, the spent PWR fuel composition is expected to differ from one assembly to the next. Uneven mixing of the powder during DUPIC fuel fabrication may lead to uncertainties in the composition of the fuel bundle and larger peaking factors in CANDU. A mixing method for reducing composition uncertainties is discussed.
