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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
Meyer Pobereskin, Kenneth D. Kok, William J. Madia
Nuclear Technology | Volume 41 | Number 2 | December 1978 | Pages 149-167
Technical Paper | Extraction of Energy From Nuclear Fuels Without Reprocessing to Separate Plutonium / Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT78-A32101
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The technical feasibility of a coprocessing concept involving recovery of all the actinides in the spent fuel as a product group has been analyzed. It has been shown that this can be accomplished by a simple modification of the Purex process. The recovered actinide product group can be reconstituted as a fuel for recycle in either light water reactors (LWRs) or liquid-metal fast breeder reactors (LMFBRs), either by addition of moderately enriched uranium for the LWR case or by controlled partial partitioning of uranium in the LMFBR case. Partial partitioning of uranium from a uranium-plutonium extract (that may contain other transuranics, especially neptunium) can be carried out under Purex process conditions that preclude separation of plutonium. A steady-state fuel composition is approached in eight cycles (40 yr) for the LWRs and five cycles (20 yr) for the LMFBRs. Potential for proliferation can be greatly reduced for subnational diversion since the plutonium is not separated from its actinide homologs, nor is the recovered actinide fuel fully decontaminated from fission products. The possibility of proliferation by national diversion can be impeded. Recycle of the actinides reduces, via transmutation, the cumulative amount of actinides produced, defers the bulk of the actinide waste disposal to the end of the useful fuel lifetime, and ameliorates the high-level waste management problem.