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Undeclared uranium hitches a ride on cobalt exports from Congo, study says
Philippe (left) and Manzuk quantified the amount of uranium that has been exported from the DRC in cobalt shipments or left behind in the environment. (Photo: Joel Hallberg/UW–Madison)
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Princeton University have published a study in Nature Communications that calls attention to a blind spot in nuclear nonproliferation: The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has exported thousands of metric tons of uranium, and there is no accounting for where it has gone.
In partnership with Lighthouse Reports and the Financial Times, UW–Madison nuclear engineering professor and nuclear security expert Sébastien Philippe and Ryan Manzuk, a geologist and research fellow in Philippe’s group and at Princeton, conducted the study using countrywide mineralization and geochemical data.
G. R. Ansarifar, M. H. Esteki, M. Zaidabadi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 195 | Number 1 | July 2016 | Pages 105-109
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-90
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Dual-cooled annular nuclear fuel, which is an internally and externally cooled annular fuel, has many advantages for heat transfer. One of the most prominent of these advantages is the ability to harvest more of this type of fuel, which can increase the thermal power of nuclear plants. In this technical note, the core of a VVER-1000 reactor is designed based on the use of internally and externally cooled annular fuels. The thermal-hydraulic parameters of the fuel rods in this type of reactor are analyzed. In addition, the uprate of the thermal power in a VVER-1000 reactor using annular fuels is investigated. For this purpose, first, the proper pitch length of fuel rods in the core is designed under clean and cold conditions using cell and core neutronics calculation codes. Then, thermal-hydraulic calculations are performed for a simulated fuel rod in a hot channel using computational fluid dynamics simulation codes. These calculations are compared with a conventional VVER-1000 reactor that does not use this kind of fuel. One of the most important results of the analysis is that annular fuel shows a sufficient margin for the departure from nucleate boiling and fuel pellet temperature relative to cylindrical fuel. The margin seems viable in accommodating a 129% power uprate.