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.
Han Gon Kim, Soon Heung Chang, Byung Ho Lee
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 115 | Number 2 | October 1993 | Pages 152-163
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE93-A28525
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Optimal Fuel Shuffling System (OFSS) was developed for the optimal design of pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel loading patterns. An optimal loading pattern is defined in which the local power peaking factor is lower than a predetermined value during one cycle and the effective multiplication factor is maximized to extract the maximum energy. The OFSS is a hybrid system in which a rule-based system, fuzzy logic, and an artificial neural network (ANN) are connected with each other. The rule-based system classifies loading patterns into two types by using several heuristic rules and a fuzzy rule. The fuzzy rule is introduced to achieve a more effective and faster search. Its membership function is automatically updated in accordance with the prediction results. The ANN predicts core parameters for the patterns generated from the rule-based system. A backpropagation network is used for fast prediction of the core parameters. The ANN and fuzzy logic can be used to improve the capabilities of existing algorithms. The OFSS was demonstrated and validated for cycle 1 of theKori-1 PWR.