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60 Years of U: Perspectives on resources, demand, and the evolving role of nuclear energy
Recent years have seen growing global interest in nuclear energy and rising confidence in the sector. For the first time since the early 2000s, there is renewed optimism about the industry’s future. This change is driven by several major factors: geopolitical developments that highlight the need for secure energy supplies, a stronger focus on resilient energy systems, national commitments to decarbonization, and rising demand for clean and reliable electricity.
J. W. Fricano, J. Buongiorno
Nuclear Technology | Volume 184 | Number 1 | October 2013 | Pages 63-77
Technical Paper | Fuel Design/Defects/Examination / Materials for Nuclear Fuels | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A19869
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A metal fuel performance code was coupled to a subchannel analysis code to predict, in a computationally efficient way, critical phenomena that could lead to pin failure for steady-state and transient scenarios in sodium-cooled fast reactors. The fuel performance and subchannel codes coupled are FEAST-METAL and an updated version of COBRA-IV-I, respectively. In coupling the codes, the importance of azimuthal temperature and stress effects in the fuel pin were analyzed; it was concluded that azimuthal temperature averaging around the fuel pin is an acceptable approximation. The codes were coupled using a wrapper, the COBRA And FEAST Executer (CAFE), written in the Python programming language. Data from EBR-II was used to confirm and verify CAFE. Finally, CAFE was used to predict the maximum allowable burnup of three different fuel assembly designs (driver fuel, radial blanket, and tight-pitch breed-and-burn fuel) as a function of operating temperature, linear power, fuel composition, cladding thickness, and smear density.