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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
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.
Scott L. Painter, Vladimir Cvetkovic, Osvaldo Pensado
Nuclear Technology | Volume 163 | Number 1 | July 2008 | Pages 129-136
Technical Paper | High-Level Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3976
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Time-domain random-walk (TDRW) algorithms are efficient methods for simulating solute transport along one-dimensional pathways. New extensions of the TDRW algorithm accommodate decay and ingrowth of radionuclides in a decay chain and time-dependent transport velocities. Tests using equilibrium sorption and matrix diffusion retention models demonstrate that the extended TDRW algorithm is accurate and computationally efficient. When combined with stochastic simulation of transport properties, the resulting algorithm, Particle on Random Streamline Segment (PORSS), also captures the effects of random spatial variations in transport velocities, including the effects of very broad velocity distributions. When used in combination with discrete fracture network simulations, the PORSS algorithm provides an accurate and practical method for simulating radionuclide transport at the geosphere scale without invoking the advection-dispersion equation.