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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.
Chang Joon Jeong, Bo Wook Rhee, Hangbok Choi, Myung Seung Yang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 155 | Number 2 | August 2006 | Pages 176-191
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3755
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The compatibility of the direct use of spent pressurized water reactor fuel in Canada deuterium uranium (CANDU) reactor (DUPIC) fuel with the existing 713-MW(electric) CANDU (CANDU-6) reactor has been analyzed for large-break loss-of-coolant-accident (LOCA) scenarios such as a 55% pump suction break, a 35% reactor inlet header break, and a 100% reactor outlet header break. The compatibility was assessed for the fuel integrity against the stored energy and the radiation environmental effect resulting from the large-break LOCA. The analysis showed that the stored energy of the DUPIC fuel was below the fuel breakup energy by 32%. The environmental effect was estimated for the personal and public doses using the radiation source term obtained from one-fourth of the fission product inventory in the fuel gap of the CANDU-6 reactor, being steadily operated at full power. The analyses have shown that both the personal and population doses are below the design limits even for a postulated dual failure such as a complete loss of containment building isolation logic.
