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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.
Yoshiyuki Inagaki, Hirofumi Ohashi, Yoshitomo Inaba, Hiroyuki Sato, Tetsuo Nishihara, Tetsuaki Takeda, Koji Hayashi, Masuro Ogawa
Nuclear Technology | Volume 157 | Number 2 | February 2007 | Pages 111-119
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3806
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) has been promoting research and development on the hydrogen production technology with a high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR), with a view to contributing to the global warming issue and hydrogen energy society in the near future. The system integration technology for connection of the hydrogen production system to the HTGR is one of the key technologies to put hydrogen production with nuclear energy to commercial use. Research and development on the system integration technology has been carried out for four items: control technology to maintain reactor operation against thermal disturbance caused by the hydrogen production system, estimation of the tritium permeation into the hydrogen from the reactor, a countermeasure against explosion, and development of a high-temperature valve to isolate the reactor and hydrogen production systems in accidents. This report describes the research activities on the system integration technology at JAEA.
