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$40M investment to spur new nuclear developments in Idaho and Wyoming
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that its Economic Development Administration (EDA) intends to award $31 million to the Intermountain-West Nuclear Energy Corridor (INEC) Tech Hub. The Idaho Advanced Energy Consortium (IAEC), the group that leads the INEC Tech Hub, subsequently announced that matching donations from its stakeholder partners will bring the total investment up to $40 million.
John K. Long
Nuclear Technology | Volume 10 | Number 1 | January 1971 | Pages 17-21
Technical Paper and Note | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT71-A30943
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Except for irradiation experiments, EBR-II is fueled with a metal alloy of uranium and fission products called fissium. At room temperature and up to 550°C the metallurgical phase of the fuel corresponds to the phase designated as alpha uranium. Recent operations with EBR-II up to 62.5 MW have raised some fuel temperatures to levels at which the metal fuel undergoes a phase change from the alpha phase to the gamma phase. The gamma phase of fissium has a significantly lower density, which is reflected in the calculated power coefficient of the reactor. A calculation of the internal fuel temperature, taking into account the variation of thermal conductivity with irradiation-induced swelling, has led to a calculated effect of the gamma phase on the power coefficient. This calculated effect agrees with observations during reactor operation.