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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.
Tunc Aldemir, Don W. Miller, Michael Stovsky, Jason Kirschenbaum, Paolo Bucci, L. Anthony Mangan, Audeen Fentiman, Steven A. Arndt
Nuclear Technology | Volume 159 | Number 2 | August 2007 | Pages 167-191
Technical Paper | Nuclear Plant Operations and Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3863
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear power plants are in the process of replacing the existing analog instrumentation and control (I&C) systems with digital technology. Digital systems distinguish themselves from other control and instrumentation systems mainly due to the presence of active software/firmware as well as hardware. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission policy statement on the use of probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) methods in nuclear regulatory activities encourages licensees to use PRA and associated analyses to support the licensing applications to the extent supported by the state-of-the-art and data. Before digital system reviews can be performed in a risk-informed manner, PRAs will need the capability to model digital I&C systems. The available methodologies for the reliability and risk modeling of digital I&C systems are reviewed with respect to their capability to account for the features of the digital I&C systems relevant to digital reactor protection and control systems, as well as the integrability of the resulting model into an existing PRA. It is concluded that the methodologies that rank as the top two with most positive features and least negative or uncertain features (using subjective criteria based on reported experience) are the dynamic flowgraph methodology and the Markov methodology combined with the cell-to-cell mapping technique, each with different advantages and limitations.