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The busyness of the nuclear fuel supply chain
Ken Petersenpresident@ans.org
With all that is happening in the industry these days, the nuclear fuel supply chain is still a hot topic. The Russian assault in Ukraine continues to upend the “where” and “how” of attaining nuclear fuel—and it has also motivated U.S. legislators to act.
Two years into the Russian war with Ukraine, things are different. The Inflation Reduction Act was passed in 2022, authorizing $700 million in funding to support production of high-assay low-enriched uranium in the United States. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy this January issued a $500 million request for proposals to stimulate new HALEU production. The Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024 includes $2.7 billion in funding for new uranium enrichment production. This funding was diverted from the Civil Nuclear Credits program and will only be released if there is a ban on importing Russian uranium into the United States—which could happen by the time this column is published, as legislation that bans Russian uranium has passed the House as of this writing and is headed for the Senate. Also being considered is legislation that would sanction Russian uranium. Alternatively, the Biden-Harris administration may choose to ban Russian uranium without legislation in order to obtain access to the $2.7 billion in funding.
Shelly X. Li
Nuclear Technology | Volume 162 | Number 2 | May 2008 | Pages 144-152
Technical Paper | First International Pyroprocessing Research Conference | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3941
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Idaho National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory have developed and demonstrated a pyroprocessing technology for the U.S. Department of Energy to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. One of the key steps in the pyroprocessing was electrorefining the spent fuel in a metal form in a molten LiCl-KCl-UCl3/liquid cadmium (Cd) system using the Mark-IV, an engineering-scale electrorefiner (ER). This paper summarizes experimental observations and engineering aspects for the roles of the Cd in electrorefining spent fuel in the Mark-IV ER. It was found that the Cd pool acted as an intermediate electrode during the electrorefining process. The Cd level gradually decreased because of its high vapor pressure at the ER operating temperature. The low Cd level caused the anode assembly to electrically short with the ER vessel hardware, which resulted in difficulty determining the endpoint of uranium dissolution from the anode baskets and reduced the current efficiency. A reflux Cd vapor trap successfully prevented the Cd level from decreasing and mitigated Cd vapor deposition on the cold metal surface inside the ER.