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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.
W. M. Stacey, K. A. Boakye, S. K. Brashear, A. C. Bryson, K. A. Burns, E. J. Bruch, S. A. Chandler, O. M. Chen, S. S. Chiu, J.-P. Floyd, C. J. Fong, S. P. Hamilton, P. B. Johnson, S. M. Jones, M. Kato, B. A. MacLaren, R. P. Manger, B. L. Meriwether, C. Mitra, K. R. Riggs, B. H. Shrader, J. C. Schulz, C. M. Sommer, T. S. Sumner, J. S. Wagner, J. B. Weathers, C. P. Wells, F. H. Willis, Z. W. Friis, J. I. Marquez-Danian, R. W. Johnson, C. de Oliveira, H. K. Park, D. W. Tedder
Nuclear Technology | Volume 159 | Number 1 | July 2007 | Pages 72-105
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3857
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The design concept for a subcritical, He-cooled, fast reactor, fueled with transuranics (TRUs) from spent nuclear fuel in coated TRISO particles and driven by a tokamak D-T fusion neutron source, is being developed at Georgia Institute of Technology. The basic concept has been developed in two previous papers. This paper reports (a) advances in the design concept intended to enable achievement of "deep-burn" of the TRUs and passive safety, (b) investigations of the possibility of reprocessing the TRISO TRU fuel and of extending the strength of the fusion neutron source, (c) more extensive analyses to confirm and improve the design with respect to the adequacy of the fuel and nuclear performance, heat removal, tritium self-sufficiency and shielding, (d) more extensive analyses to confirm that the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor divertor, magnet and heating/current drive systems can be adapted, and (e) fuel cycle analyses to further investigate the contribution that such a reactor could make to closing the nuclear fuel cycle.