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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.
Liu Xiaobo, Fan Xiaoqiang, Peng Xianjue, Du Jinfeng, Gao Hui
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 179 | Number 2 | February 2015 | Pages 119-129
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-30
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A novel experimental method is introduced for effectively validating neutron initiation probability, through which the delayed neutron influence on the source strength can be neglected—this is the main reason for substantially explaining the burst waiting time experiments performed in the Godiva and Caliban burst reactors. The key idea of the new method is that the burst is initiated by simultaneously injecting a pulse of neutrons with appropriate strength just as the reactor achieves prompt supercritical and tallied by judging whether or not the burst is initiated by the pulsed neutrons based on the measured data. The principle of the method is described using initiation theory. The Chinese Fast Burst Reactor–II (CFBR-II) structure and two sets of configurations for preliminary experiments are then described. Last, those two sets of preliminary experiments are carried out on CFBR-II in the state of 0.042 $ prompt supercritical, and results, including the typical picture and other important measured data, are provided in order to illustrate how the initiation probability can be validated. The initiation probability of 0.43 was determined by preliminary performing of 65 bursts, which is an ∼35% relative difference between the theoretic calculations and the experimental results. Some discussion and suggestions for possible follow-on work are provided.