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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.
W. F. G. van Rooijen, J. L. Kloosterman, T. H. J. J. van der Hagen, H. van Dam
Nuclear Technology | Volume 159 | Number 2 | August 2007 | Pages 119-133
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3859
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this paper passive reactivity control devices for a Generation IV gas-cooled fast reactor (GCFR) are discussed. The proposed devices use liquid 6Li as absorber. The device is triggered by a freeze seal, and upon activation the 6Li is irreversibly introduced into the core region by pressure differences. The device is dubbed the lithium injection module (LIM). Transient thermohydraulic calculations were done using the CATHARE2 code on a simplified thermohydraulic model of GFR600, a 600-MW(thermal) GCFR investigated in the scope of the European GCFR-STREP. The thermohydraulic model uses an accurate model of the ceramic fuel plates and includes natural convection decay heat removal circuits. To properly account for power production during the transient, a synthetic decay power curve was made based on the ANSI/ANS-5.1-1994 law. Loss-of-flow and control rod withdrawal/ejection transients are presented. Neutronic calculations show that the LIMs have a low reactivity worth between -2.1 and -1.5 $. In spite of their low worth, the LIMs are capable of keeping the reactor power bounded during all calculated transients. Shutdown is not always achieved, depending on the kind of transient under consideration. For pressurized loss of flow, recriticality due to Doppler feedback may become problematic in the natural-circulation phase. For rapid control rod ejections, the resulting very fast power transients cause concern for material degradation. One LIM would be enough to control reactor power, but redundancy may call for more than one LIM in the core.