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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.
G. B. Hiremath, N. R. Banapurmath, Ashok M. Sajjan, N. H. Ayachit, N. M. Badiger
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 200 | Number 8 | August 2026 | Pages 1924-1933
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2025.2546745
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The shielding parameters for gamma rays, charged particles, and neutrons were assessed for epoxy composites doped with boron carbide nanoparticles using EPIXs, NGCal, ESTAR, PSTAR, and ASTAR software. Boron carbide nanoparticles with concentrations ranging from 0.1% to 0.4% were synthesized and then characterized using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The FTIR results show that there is no notable shift or omission of spectral bands with the incorporation of boron carbide nanoparticles in epoxy composites. The SEM results indicate good dispersion and uniform distribution of nanoparticles in epoxies. The concentration of boron carbide nanoparticles was increased to 30% to evaluate their effectiveness as a shielding material against nuclear radiation. The evaluated results show that there are no significant changes in gamma-ray mass attenuation coefficient values for the composites in the selected energy region. On the other hand, the effective atomic number values vary substantially from 10% to 30%, with an increase in boron carbide concentrations of up to 30%. The exposure buildup factor and energy absorption buildup factor values exhibited sharper peaks at 40 mean free paths (mfp) compared to 1 mfp in the lower-energy regions. Furthermore, the mass attenuation factor for thermal neutrons is found to be of higher values than those for concrete, water, and commercial glass, indicating that the present composite is a promising nuclear radiation-shielding material. The total stopping power for protons and alpha particles for these composites showed peaks at 0.08 and 0.6 MeV, respectively. The current results demonstrate that the selected epoxy composites doped with boron carbide nanoparticles are an effective nuclear radiation-shielding material.