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Conference Spotlight
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.
V. Subramanian, R. Baskaran
Nuclear Technology | Volume 160 | Number 3 | December 2007 | Pages 308-313
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3901
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The behavior of sodium hydroxide aerosol is one of the important features in the safety evaluation of a sodium-cooled fast reactor. The vapor phase combustion of the sodium results in the generation of sodium oxide aerosols in the flame zone. The physical and chemical changes of sodium oxide aerosol after leaving the flame zone are very important to understand the sodium oxide aerosol process. The particle size distribution of sodium hydroxide aerosol after leaving the flame zone is measured using both optical and impaction techniques in the Aerosol Test Facility. The mass median diameter is found to be ~1.0 m for the particles older than 20 s. The size distribution is essentially attributed to sodium hydroxide aerosol. The initial size distribution of particles does not vary with ignition temperatures over the range of 250 to 550°C for a confined pool, whereas the size increases with increase in relative humidity.