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The busyness of the nuclear fuel supply chain
Ken Petersenpresident@ans.org
With all that is happening in the industry these days, the nuclear fuel supply chain is still a hot topic. The Russian assault in Ukraine continues to upend the “where” and “how” of attaining nuclear fuel—and it has also motivated U.S. legislators to act.
Two years into the Russian war with Ukraine, things are different. The Inflation Reduction Act was passed in 2022, authorizing $700 million in funding to support production of high-assay low-enriched uranium in the United States. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy this January issued a $500 million request for proposals to stimulate new HALEU production. The Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024 includes $2.7 billion in funding for new uranium enrichment production. This funding was diverted from the Civil Nuclear Credits program and will only be released if there is a ban on importing Russian uranium into the United States—which could happen by the time this column is published, as legislation that bans Russian uranium has passed the House as of this writing and is headed for the Senate. Also being considered is legislation that would sanction Russian uranium. Alternatively, the Biden-Harris administration may choose to ban Russian uranium without legislation in order to obtain access to the $2.7 billion in funding.
R. J. Sheu, Y. F. Chen, S. H. Jiang, J. N. Wang, U. T. Lin
Nuclear Technology | Volume 175 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 335-342
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 16th Biennial Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division / Radiation and Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A12305
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study reevaluates the dose rates at the site boundary of an independent spent-fuel storage installation (ISFSI) using the MAVRIC computational sequence in the SCALE6 code package. Based on advanced variance-reduction techniques and powerful geometry modeling capabilities, MAVRIC can tackle this large ISFSI shielding problem by directly simulating the radiation transport in a full-scale model. This study started with a benchmark calculation of a single storage cask and then investigated the impact of a fully loaded ISFSI on the dose rates at the site boundary. Because of the short distance to the nearest site boundary, additional shielding to the cask itself or the site is necessary to meet the stringent design dose limit. Compared to the two-step cask-by-cask approach adopted in the original safety analysis report, this method of analyzing the site boundary doses is straightforward and efficient enough to allow us to evaluate the effect of the cask design modification and to test various options for further improvement.