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Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
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NEI chief executive highlights “unlimited potential” for nuclear in state of the industry address
Korsnick
In the Nuclear Energy Institute’s annual State of the Nuclear Energy Industry report, NEI president and CEO and Maria Korsnick expressed optimism about the nuclear industry and she issued a call to action.
Her address was part of NEI’s Nuclear Energy Policy forum. The forum, being held in Washington, D.C., on May 20 and May 21, brings together industry leaders, policy stakeholders, and clean energy experts to discuss nuclear advocacy. Korsnick’s remarks focused on the private capital flowing into the industry, progress on regulatory reform and new nuclear technology, and how the U.S. is trying to take the lead on the global nuclear stage.
“We are here at an unprecedented time in our industry history,” Korsnick said. “I’m proud to say that the nuclear industry has a future of unlimited potential.”
Philip E. MacDonald, Chan Bock Lee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 147 | Number 1 | July 2004 | Pages 1-7
Technical Paper | Thoria-Urania NERI | doi.org/10.13182/NT04-A3510
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper provides an introduction to and a summary of the remaining papers in this issue of Nuclear Technology. The papers in this issue present the important results from a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored Nuclear Engineering Research Initiative (NERI) project to study the efficacy of the thorium-uranium dioxide (ThO2-UO2) once-through fuel cycle in current light water reactors. The project addressed fuel cycle neutronics and economics; ThO2-UO2 fuel manufacturing; the in-pile thermal/mechanical behavior of ThO2-UO2 fuel during normal, off-normal, and accident conditions; and the long-term stability of ThO2-UO2 waste. Results from this work show that a small-scale separation of the uranium and thorium will enhance the fuel reactivity and achievable burnup from uranium-thorium dioxide fuels. Under conditions that meet the thermal requirements in present pressurized water reactors (PWRs), a properly designed microheterogeneous fuel will have more reactivity than all-uranium fuel, and the overall production of plutonium is significantly reduced. The use of thorium as a host for actinide fuels when PWRs are used for actinide transmutation was also explored. It was also determined that there were no fundamental obstacles to converting the current plants that manufacture uranium oxide-only fuel to a mixed ThO2-UO2 fuel. Also, the in-service and transient thermal and mechanical performance of homogeneous ThO2-UO2-based fuels with respect to safety is generally equal to or better than that of all-uranium fuel. Furthermore, a mixed thorium-uranium dioxide spent fuel appears to be a much more stable waste form than uranium oxide spent fuel.
