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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.
Vladimir Kogan, Philip M. Schumacher
Nuclear Technology | Volume 161 | Number 2 | February 2008 | Pages 190-202
Technical Note | Miscellaneous | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3922
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper summarizes the results of an independent review of information from the available literature on plutonium release parameters obtained in worldwide studies on accidental fires that might occur in nuclear facilities and generates technically justifiable recommendations on plutonium releases based on this review. This work was limited to the accidental fires in nuclear facilities involving plutonium-contaminated waste materials that can be in either solid or liquid form, as well as involving plutonium metal itself. Releases of plutonium are expressed in terms of the airborne release fraction (ARF), defined as the total fraction of initial material released in the accident, or the airborne release rate, which is the average rate at which ARF is released for the duration of the accident. Respirable fraction of the mass of plutonium dispersed in the air is conditionally assumed to include particles having aerodynamic diameters smaller than 10 m (aerodynamic diameter of a particle is defined as the diameter of a unit density sphere having the same aerodynamic properties as the particle; particles of any shape or density will have the same aerodynamic diameter if their settling velocity is the same). For intense fires in solid waste storage areas or large explosions associated with plutonium metal, up to 50% of the plutonium contamination may be released as respirable aerosol.