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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.
I Ming Huang, Yuh Ming Ferng, Shih Jen Wang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 160 | Number 3 | December 2007 | Pages 294-307
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3900
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The severe accident management guideline (SAMG) was developed and implemented at the Kuosheng nuclear power plant (NPP) in Taiwan at the end of 2003. The Kuosheng NPP is a Mark-III boiling water reactor (BWR)-6 located in the north of Taiwan. The SAMG of the Kuosheng NPP is developed based on the BWR Owners Group Emergency Procedure and Severe Accident Guidelines. In this paper, MELCOR 1.8.5 is used to investigate the effectiveness of the Kuosheng SAMG and to analyze the reactor coolant system (RCS) bleed-and-feed strategy in a postulated station blackout (SBO) accident since this accident is a dominant sequence that can induce core damage. These simulation results can be applied for the typical BWR-6 NPPs. Based on the simulation results, the major events of an SBO accident without any operator actions, including core uncovery, cladding oxidation, hydrogen generation, fuel relocation, vessel failure, and containment failure, are well presented. The RCS bleed-and-feed strategy can cool down the hot core and bring the vessel into the stable condition in the SBO accident with high-pressure core spray injection according to the Kuosheng SAMG. The reactor pressure vessel depressurization before the reactor liquid level reaches one-fourth of the core liquid level can prevent damage to the core fuel. However, the water temperature of the suppression pool will reach saturation temperature, and the containment pressure may challenge the containment integrity. These phenomena were not considered while developing the SAMG.