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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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The journey of the U.S. fuel cycle
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
While most big journeys begin with a clear objective, they rarely start with an exact knowledge of the route. When commissioning the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson didn’t provide specific “turn right at the big mountain” directions to the Corps of Discovery. He gave goal-oriented instructions: explore the Missouri River, find its source, search for a transcontinental water route to the Pacific, and build scientific and cultural knowledge along the way.
Jefferson left it up to Lewis and Clark to turn his broad, geopolitically motivated guidance into gritty reality.
Similarly, U.S. nuclear policy has begun a journey toward closing the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. There is a clear signal of support for recycling from the Trump administration, along with growing bipartisan excitement in Congress. Yet the precise path remains unclear.
Jong Chull Jo, Myung Jo Jhung, Woong Sik Kim, Hho Jung Kim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 152 | Number 1 | October 2005 | Pages 118-128
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3664
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents an approach to the remaining life prediction of steam generator (SG) U-tubes, which are intact initially, subjected to fretting-wear degradation due to the interaction between a vibrating tube and a foreign object in operating nuclear power plants. The operating SG shell-side flow field conditions are obtained from a three-dimensional SG flow calculation using the ATHOS3 code. Modal analyses are performed for the finite element models of U-tubes to get the natural frequency, corresponding mode shape, and participation factor. The wear rate of a U-tube caused by a foreign object is calculated using the Archard formula, and the remaining life of the tube is predicted. Also discussed in this study are the effects of the tube modal characteristics, external flow velocity, and tube internal pressure on the estimated results of the remaining life of the tube.
