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Texas A&M welcomes uranium conversion research
The Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) has signed a research agreement with Quantum Leap Energy (QLE) “to advance and de-risk the commercial production of high-purity uranium hexafluoride (UF6).”
QLE is an Austin, Texas–based subsidiary of ASP Isotopes (ASPI), which is developing an isotope enrichment platform for applications in nuclear energy, nuclear medicine, and semiconductors. QLE specializes in the uranium conversion step of the nuclear fuel cycle—the conversion of yellowcake uranium concentrate (U3O8) into UF6 prior to enrichment.
Nicolo’ Abrate, Alex Aimetta, Sandra Dulla, Nicola Pedroni
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 12 | December 2023 | Pages 2977-2999
YMSR Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2190861
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The development of new reactor technologies requires careful assessments of the various sources of epistemic uncertainties. In this work, nuclear data uncertainties featuring the main isotopes of the U/Th molten salt fast reactor (MSFR) design are propagated through Monte Carlo calculations to quantify the final uncertainty on some relevant integral parameters. In the first part of this paper, some best-estimate calculations are performed by selecting different nuclear data libraries, showing the remarkable impact of this choice on the final responses. Then the Generalized Perturbation Theory routine available in Serpent 2 is adopted for a preliminary sensitivity and uncertainty analyses with respect to keff, highlighting a significant discrepancy between the covariance of the JEFF-3.3 and ENDF/B-VIII.0 libraries. After the selection of a few relevant nuclides, namely, 7Li, 19F, 232Th, and 233U, the Total Monte Carlo method and the unscented transform (UT) are then adopted to estimate the uncertainty of other responses of interest like the conversion ratio and some multigroup constants. Some potential issues of the UT are highlighted, and a mitigation strategy is applied. A relevant result of this analysis concerns the need for better data evaluations for the nuclides constituting the circulating salt for an effective deployment of the MSFR technology.