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Fuel loading process begins at Palisades
The Palisades nuclear power plant has drawn closer to restart, as plant staff began the process of loading fuel into the reactor vessel on Sunday morning.
The commencement of fuel loading places the Covert, Mich., facility in Mode 6—or the refueling stage—under the plant’s technical specifications, plant owner and operator Holtec International said in a news release. The Palisades reactor core consists of 204 fuel assemblies that include new fuel and partially used fuel from the plant’s most recent operating cycles. According to Holtec, the fuel loading is being conducted in accordance with plant procedures and technical specifications.
Kyle M. Paaren, Jason Schulthess, Jason Barney, Hakan Ozaltun
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 200 | Number 1 | January 2026 | Pages 112-122
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2025.2545155
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The United States High Performance Research Reactor Program’s objective is to reduce the amount of highly enriched uranium currently implemented in research reactors. The conversion of these research reactors requires designing a monolithic U10Mo plate fuel, with the fuel plate geometry being dependent on each research reactor. The process of forming the plates includes a hot isostatic pressing (HIP) to manufacture a prototypic plate. In the case of the Missouri University Research Reactor (MURR) design demonstration element (DDE) plate manufacture, plates that have been through HIP are then curved using dies and a hydraulic press to impart the desired curvature. Both fabrication processes impart residual stresses into each fuel plate region, with the curvature of the plates taking some regions of the fuel plate up to their material yield stresses, accompanied by plastic strain. The amount of plastic strain and stress imparted onto each MURR DDE plate is determined by the radius of curvature, thickness of each region, and overall width of the fuel plates. This work aims to predict the yield stresses and strain using ABAQUS to simulate the proposed fabrication process of the MURR DDE plates, accompanied by discussion over the stresses and strains as to their relation to nuclear fuel performance and the impact they will have during early irradiation.