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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.
G. B. Hiremath, V. P. Singh, N. H. Ayachit, N. M. Badiger
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 9 | September 2024 | Pages 1806-1816
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2270742
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Ti-Nb-Fe-Cr alloys are used in various fields, such as nuclear radiation shielding, cladding material in nuclear reactors, and implants in the medical field. It is one of the best materials for biomedical applications as it is biocompatible, is corrosion resistant, and has good mechanical properties. As nuclear radiation emanates from various sources in a nuclear reactor, the behavior of this alloy with the interaction of gamma and neutrons has not been well studied. In the present investigations, the interaction of gammas and neutrons with Ti-27Nb-7Fe-xCr (x = 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8 wt%) alloys is studied in order to understand the radiation shielding properties and their usefulness in biomedical applications. Gamma-ray–interaction parameters such as MAC, HVL, MFP, Zeff, Zeq, Neff, and multilayer energy absorption buildup factor (MLEABF) are estimated using EpiXs, PyMLBUF, and NGCal software in the energy range of 1 keV to 15 MeV. The multilayer buildup factor (MLBF) is calculated for cortical bone and for alloys with varying Cr concentrations. Comparison of the MLBF values of alloys with cortical bone shows that in the lower-energy region as well as the higher-energy region above 0.5 MeV, alloys and cortical bone yield the same values, indicating that the alloys behave as cortical bone in this energy region. Mass attenuation factors (MAFs) of thermal and fast neutrons are also calculated for various elastic modulus values of selected alloys at thermal and fast neutrons. It is found that the elastic modulus increases with increasing MAF values of both fast and thermal neutrons. By increasing the Cr content in the Ti-27Nb-7Fe alloy, the elastic modulus decreases. The relationship between the MAF of neutrons and the elastic modulus of the alloy is established for the first time.
