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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.
Stacey F. Imboden, Thomas J. Overcamp
Nuclear Technology | Volume 155 | Number 1 | July 2006 | Pages 114-118
Technical Note | Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3750
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
CAP88-PC, Version 2.0, and NORMTRI, which are based on the Gaussian plume model, were used to estimate the chronic dose due to a continuous, ground-level, atmospheric release of tritium as tritiated water. For the same conditions the predictions of CAP88-PC were found to be higher by a factor of 3 or less than those of NORMTRI. The major differences are due to the use of higher dose coefficients in CAP88-PC and NORMTRI's method of calculating the tritium content of food.