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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.
Shengyao Ding, Kun Xu, Xiaojian Huang, Zheng Wang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 155 | Number 3 | September 2006 | Pages 350-357
Technical Paper | Nuclear Plant Operations and Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3767
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper describes a new system for monitoring leaks in a steam generator. The new system extends the traditional 16N monitor to detect both the rate and the location of a leak. Because the transit time is different for radioactive 16N and 19O to travel from the reactor core via the hot bottom side, cold bottom side, or bend region of the U-tube in a steam generator to the gamma-ray detector, the new system uses the different transit times to identify the location of leaks. Specifically, the ratio S0 of 16N to 19O activities in the reactor core of a swimming pool reactor was calculated by combining the cross sections np(E) and n(E) with the neutron spectra n(E). The ratio S1 of 16N to 19O activities in the measurement room was also calculated and measured by the high-purity germanium and NaI(Tl) detectors. The result of the calculation agrees with the measurement within an acceptable range.