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What’s reshaping nuclear licensing and compliance today?
Mark Reidmeyer
It is the convergence of urgency, innovation, and modernization that is reshaping nuclear licensing and compliance today.
For decades, nuclear licensing operated in a relatively stable environment built around large light water reactors, predictable review cycles, and well-established regulatory pathways. Today, that model is evolving rapidly. Advanced reactors, AI-enabled tools, digital engineering platforms, grid reliability concerns, and aggressive decarbonization goals are all pushing the industry—and regulators—to move faster and think differently.
W. J. Lackey, F. J. Homan, A. R. Olsen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 16 | Number 1 | October 1972 | Pages 120-142
Technical Paper | Reactor Materials Performance / Material | doi.org/10.13182/NT72-A31181
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Thermal-gradient-induced redistribution of porosity and fuel components during irradiation of (U,Pu)O2 alters the fuel thermal conductivity, melting point, mechanical properties, and radial heat generation profile sufficiently to influence fast breeder reactor fuel pin performance. Analytical models, which should prove useful in design and analysis of such fuel pins, were developed for predicting radial porosity and Pu: (U + Pu) profiles. The interrelated porosity and actinide redistribution models are kinetic and based on the evaporation-condensation mechanism of material transport. The models were shown to yield predictions in accord with experimentally measured porosity and actinide profiles for an irradiated pin containing stoichiometric fuel. The volume-averaged porosity of the columnar grain region of irradiated pins was 5.9 and ≥3.8% after burnups of 0.7 and 4.2% FIMA, respectively. The columnar grains are thus more porous than previously believed.