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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Selena Ng, Dominique Grenèche, Bernard Guesdon, Richard Vinoche, Marc Delpech, Florence Dolci, Hervé Golfier, Christine Poinot-Salanon
Nuclear Technology | Volume 164 | Number 1 | October 2008 | Pages 13-19
Technical Paper | Icapp '06 | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A4004
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Introducing neptunium into the nuclear fuel cycle has been proposed in the past as a way to impede the diversion or the direct use of plutonium to fabricate a nuclear explosive device. This paper aims to technically analyze the industrial consequences should this proposal be implemented. Two scenarios are considered: (a) adding neptunium to fresh uranium oxide (UOX) fuel before irradiation in a light water reactor (LWR) and (b) separating neptunium together with plutonium from used UOX fuel and using this combined oxide to fabricate mixed oxide (MOX) fuel before subsequent irradiation in an LWR. In both cases, assembly calculations for a pressurized water reactor using fresh fuel doped with neptunium are presented for a wide range of neptunium proportions. The consequences on the core and fuel performance and the fuel cycle are analyzed. The analysis shows that while irradiating neptunium-doped UOX fuel can offer significant proliferation-resistance benefits because of the increased quantity of the plutonium isotope 238Pu in the discharged fuel, it entails heavy industrial penalties even at 1% Np content. The use of neptunium with MOX fuel is limited to 0.5% in order to maintain a negative void coefficient. At this proportion, it offers minimal increase in 238Pu content, and it is unlikely that detectability through gamma-ray emissions of the resulting plutonium-neptunium oxide mixture is increased. The fact that neptunium itself may pose a proliferation risk must be carefully weighed in any decision to use neptunium as a tool to increase proliferation resistance.