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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.
J. H. Kim, I. K. Park, B. T. Min, S. W. Hong, S. H. Hong, J. H. Song, H. D. Kim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 158 | Number 3 | June 2007 | Pages 378-395
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3849
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Triggered steam explosion experiments have been carried out in the TROI facilities to investigate the energetics of the steam explosions. Two types of corium melt were used as a melt. One was eutectic corium at 70:30 wt% (UO2:ZrO2), and the other was corium at 80:20 wt%. The diameter of the water pool was 0.6 m, and the depth was varied from 0.67 to 1.3 m. An external trigger (PETN, 1.0 g) was applied just before contact of the melt and the bottom of the interaction vessel, which is believed to be the time of a possible spontaneous triggering. The external trigger led to triggered steam explosions in all the experiments. In the experiments with 70:30 corium, the maximum recorded dynamic pressure and the dynamic load were 17.0 MPa and 360 kN, respectively. Meanwhile, in the experiment with 80:20 corium, the maximum dynamic pressure and the dynamic load reached 7.7 MPa and 200 kN, respectively. The energetics obtained from the triggered steam explosion tests with 70:30 corium were greater than those from the triggered experiment with 80:20 corium. The strength of a triggered steam explosion was found to depend on the composition of the corium.