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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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Shifting the paradigm of supply chain
Chad Wolf
When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.
The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).
Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.
W. P. Barthold, J. C. Beitel, P. S. K. Lam, Y. Orechwa, S. F. Su, R. B. Turski
Nuclear Technology | Volume 46 | Number 3 | December 1979 | Pages 525-528
Technical Paper | Nuclear Power Reactor Safety / Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A32361
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To avoid high energy releases in unprotected loss-of-flow accidents, cores can be designed such that the removal of sodium would add only a small amount of reactivity or even a negative reactivity to the reactor. Reduction in sodium void reactivity can be achieved by changing either the geometry or composition of the core. Pancake, modular, and heterogeneous core configurations were investigated. Heterogeneous cores showed sodium void reactivities in the 2-dollar range with only small penalties in doubling time when compared with the equivalent homogeneous cores. Liquid-metal fast breeder reactors using U-Th fuel in the form of metal, oxide, or carbide show negative sodium void reactivities but doubling times above 30 yr.
