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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.
Frank B. Estabrook
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 11 | Number 1 | September 1961 | Pages 43-47
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE61-A25982
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A multigroup diffusion theory is formulated for heterogeneous reactors having periodic arrays of line discontinuities. These discontinuities are idealized cylindrical internal boundaries of an otherwise homogeneous moderating medium, and appropriate mixed-group or multiplying boundary conditions at such boundaries allow Floquet solutions to be found for the neutron fluxes in the moderator. Real superpositions of such Floquet solutions can then give the physical fluxes in finite reactors. The requirement that a Floquet solution in the moderator have the proper thermal flux behavior at a cylindrical internal boundary, to match the thermal flux actually inside a fuel rod, leads to a “criticality” condition, the solutions of which give the spectrum of allowed Floquet solutions. For each of these a relation between material bucklings Bx2, By2, and Bz2 is obtained which is, in general, anisotropic.