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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. M. Stacey, W. Van Rooijen, T. Bates, E. Colvin, J. Dion, J. Feener, E. Gayton, D. Gibbs, C. Grennor, J. Head, F. Hope, J. Ireland, A. Johnson, B. Jones, N. Mejias, C. Myers, A. Schmitz, C. Sommer, T. Sumner, L. Tschaepe
Nuclear Technology | Volume 162 | Number 1 | April 2008 | Pages 53-79
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3933
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The design concept of a subcritical advanced burner reactor (SABR) is described. SABR is fueled with transuranics (TRUs) discharged from thermal reactors cast into a TRU-Zr metal fuel pin and is cooled with sodium. The reactor operates subcritical to achieve a deep-burn four-batch fuel cycle that fissions 25% of the TRU in an 8.2-yr residence time, limited by radiation damage accumulation (200 displacements per atom) in the oxygen dispersion strengthened clad and structure. The annual TRU fission rate in SABR [3000 MW(thermal)] is comparable to the annual TRU discharge of three to five 1000-MW(electric) light water reactors, depending on the plant capacity factor of SABR. A tokamak D-T fusion neutron source based on physics and technology that will be demonstrated in ITER supports the subcritical operation.
