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Division Spotlight
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
Standards Program
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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Latest News
Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
Sang Ji Kim, Pham Nhu Viet Ha, Jae Yong Lim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 194 | Number 3 | June 2016 | Pages 340-352
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-53
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An advanced sodium-cooled fast reactor concept has been developed in Korea for transuranics (TRU) transmutation with an electricity output of 600 MW(electric) (called the KALIMER-600 TRU burner). The core design philosophy is primarily based on passive safety mechanisms to meet the Generation IV technology goals. Accordingly, metal fuel has been adopted to enhance its inherent passive safety characteristics. The charged fuel in a ternary metal alloy (U-TRU-Zr) consists of self-recycled TRU and TRU recovered from the spent nuclear fuels of current light water reactors through a pyro-metallurgical process, which is assumed to carry over 5% of the inventory of rare earth (RE) elements. It has been recognized that an additional amount of RE in the fuel would decrease the material attractiveness of the charged fuel with respect to proliferation resistance and physical protection (PR&PP). However, this may raise concerns because most of the reactor physics parameters will tend to negatively affect the passive safety features encoded in the original core concept. Thus, this study investigates the impact of the RE recovery fraction on the core physics performance and important safety parameters such as Doppler coefficients and sodium void reactivity. The results are expected to help provide guidance regarding the development of limiting conditions for RE contents to recycling technology flow sheet developers and ternary metal fuel developers, and to provide insight into optimizing the core passive safety characteristics under accident conditions should a significant amount of RE be needed to enhance PR&PP.