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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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U.S. nuclear supply chain: Ready for liftoff
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
This month, September 8–11, the American Nuclear Society is teaming up with the Nuclear Energy Institute to host our first-ever Nuclear Energy Conference and Expo—NECX for short—in Atlanta. This new meeting combines ANS’s Utility Working Conference and NEI’s Nuclear Energy Assembly to form what NEI CEO Maria Korsnick and I hope will be the premier nuclear industry gathering in America.
We did this because after more than four decades of relative stagnation, the U.S. nuclear supply chain is finally entering a new era of dynamic growth. This resurgence is being driven by several powerful and increasingly durable forces: the explosive demand for electricity from artificial intelligence and data centers, an unprecedented wave of public and private acceptance of—and investment in—advanced nuclear technologies, and a strong market signal for reliable, on-demand power. Add the recent Trump administration executive orders on nuclear into the mix, and you have all the makings of an accelerant-rich business environment primed for rapid expansion.
Yuichiro Asano, Noriko Asanuma, Toshihiko Ito, Makoto Kataoka, Shinya Fujino, Tomoo Yamamura, Wataru Sugiyama, Hiroshi Tomiyasu, Kunihiko Mizumachi, Yasuhisa Ikeda, Yukio Wada, Masami Asou
Nuclear Technology | Volume 120 | Number 3 | December 1997 | Pages 198-210
Technical Paper | Enrichment and Reprocessing System | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35411
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new reprocessing system for spent nuclear fuels based on a precipitation method is proposed to recover uranium and transuranium elements from spent nuclear fuels in high ratios and to achieve extreme safety without any potential dangers. Experiments were carried out for a simulated fuel solution containing uranium and 17 major elements. The main reprocessing processes are as follows: (a) dissolution of U02 fuel under mild conditions; (b) neutralization of the dissolved fuel solution with Na2C03-NaHC03 mixed solutions, followed by the separation of precipitated fission products by centrifugation; (c) separation of cesium by a precipitation method using a tetraphenylborate ion; and (d) recovery of uranium (U) as a precipitate of the hydrolyzed compound from an alkaline solution. As a result, 99.95% of the U was recovered with the least amount of fission products, i.e., 10-5 g or even less in the recovered 1 g of U with the only exceptions being zirconium and molybdenum.