ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jun 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2026
Nuclear Technology
July 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Launching into tomorrow: NRIC guides new era of research and deployment
In June 2025, the Department of Energy announced the Reactor Pilot Program, an authorization pathway that allowed reactor developers to partner with the DOE to get first-of-a-kind (FOAK) reactors built and tested. Soon after, the DOE rolled out a complementary Fuel Line Pilot Program, which aimed to fast-track fuel projects. In all, 20 projects were accepted into the new programs.
Walter Seifritz
Nuclear Technology | Volume 63 | Number 2 | November 1983 | Pages 286-294
Technical Paper | Economic | doi.org/10.13182/NT83-A33288
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A nuclear reactor strategy that involves light water reactors (LWRs) and advanced pressurized water reactors (APWRs) with a high conversion ratio was analyzed in a logistical manner assuming a finite resource of ∼5 million metric tons of natural uranium. The emphasis lies in the treatment of the dynamics of deploying this two-component LWR-APWR system. The result is that the improvement of the uranium utilization is a function of time and reaches its maximum value (a factor of ∼3 compared with the classical plutonium recycling) only at the very end of the cheap natural uranium era. In view of the future role of nuclear energy in covering a substantial part of the global energy demand, it is shown that an LWR-APWR reactor strategy could neither reach an acceptable power level nor would it be able to support such a level over a significant period of time. If we want to raise the nuclear capacity to a reasonable level, the early introduction of the fast breeder reactor is unavoidable.