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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.
K. Nagarajan, T. Subramanian, B. Prabhakara Reddy, P. R. Vasudeva Rao, Baldev Raj
Nuclear Technology | Volume 162 | Number 2 | May 2008 | Pages 259-263
Technical Note | First International Pyroprocessing Research Conference | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3954
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Reducing the cooling time of spent fast breeder reactor (FBR) fuel, thus reducing the doubling time and introducing metallic fuels into FBRs, is essential for meeting the increasing energy demand of India. Development of pyrochemical reprocessing technology for processing the spent FBR fuels is another prerequisite. Accordingly, studies on the molten salt electrorefining process for metallic fuels and the oxide electrowinning process for oxide fuels have been carried out at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam. A laboratory-scale argon atmosphere facility for molten salt electrorefining process studies is operational. Using this facility, studies on all the unit operations of the process have been carried out on uranium alloys. A code, PRAGAMAN, based on thermochemical modeling has been developed to simulate the electrotransport behavior of elements during the electrorefining process. Based on our studies, the eutectic MgCl2-NaCl-KCl ternary salt has been proposed as the alternate electrolyte for the conventional 2CsCl-NaCl electrolyte for oxide processing. A facility to demonstrate the remotization of all the process steps of the molten salt electrorefining process flow sheet for metallic fuels at 1- to 3-kg scale is being set up. Basic electrochemical studies on the reduction behavior of the chlorides and oxychlorides of uranium and the lanthanides in molten salts have also been carried out. This paper describes the studies carried out so far and the plans for the near future.