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Integrating Waste Management for Advanced Reactors: The Universal Canister System and Project UPWARDS
When the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy launched the Optimizing Nuclear Waste and Advanced Reactor Disposal Systems (ONWARDS) program in 2022, it posed a challenge that the nuclear industry had never seriously confronted before: how to design waste management solutions that anticipate the coming shift to advanced reactors and not merely retrofit existing systems built for an older generation of technology. The program’s objectives were ambitious—reduce disposal footprint, enable scalable pathways for unfamiliar waste streams, and build the technical foundations for future disposal—yet also tightly grounded in the realities of emerging nuclear fuel cycles. For the nuclear community, this was a timely call. Advanced reactors were accelerating toward deployment, but the waste management systems needed to support them had not kept pace.
Toshihiro Yamamoto, Hiroki Sakamoto
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 8 | August 2024 | Pages 1607-1619
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2266623
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The inverse reactor period α is a fundamental mode eigenvalue of the α-mode nonlinear Boltzmann eigenvalue equation that considers delayed neutron contributions. Thus far, several Monte Carlo methods, including the α-k, weight balancing, and transition rate matrix methods, have been developed to calculate α. This study presents a new Monte Carlo method for predicting α by using the derivatives of the k-eigenvalue with respect to α. Formulae are derived to calculate the first and second derivatives using the differential operator sampling method. The key feature of the new proposed method is its ability to estimate the uncertainty of the predicted α by considering the uncertainty of the k-eigenvalue and its derivatives with respect to α.