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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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NNSA awards BWXT $1.5B defense fuels contract
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded BWX Technologies a contract valued at $1.5 billion to build a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Tennessee in support of the administration’s efforts to build out a domestic supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense-related nuclear fuel.
Richard G. Bock, John D. Duncan, James E. Leonard
Nuclear Technology | Volume 11 | Number 4 | August 1971 | Pages 532-543
Technical Paper | Symposium on Fuel Rod Failure and Its Effect / Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT71-A30850
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The first full-length, electrically heated, 49-rod, Zircaloy-clad simulated BWR fuel bundle with internally pressurized rods was spray cooled under loss-of-coolant conditions. The heater rods were internally pressurized with argon to simulate fission product gas inventory. Many perforations and severe rod distortions occurred near the center of the bundle. Nevertheless, spray cooling, initiated at a maximum cladding temperature of 1920°F, was effective in limiting cladding temperatures to ≈2250°F. Electrical failure of 10 heater rods complicated interpretation of the results, and it is estimated that the maximum temperature would have been ≈2360°F had the failures not occurred. The maximum coolant flow area reduction around a single rod caused by local perforations was 50%. However, this flow area reduction did not appreciably impair the effectiveness of the spray cooling system. That is, analysis performed using current General Electric (GE) loss-of-coolant technique s and heat transfer coefficients derived from stainless-steel-clad bundle tests predicted the maximum cladding temperature to within 20°F.