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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
ITA to work with IAEA on advance geologic repository knowledge
The International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA), a nongovernmental organization made up of 81 member states working to advance the safe, beneficial use of subsurface spaces, is working with the International Atomic Energy Agency to support the advancement of geologic disposal facilities for high-level radioactive waste.
Mark D. DeHart, Zain Karriem, Michael A. Pope
Nuclear Technology | Volume 201 | Number 3 | March 2018 | Pages 247-266
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1322451
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A conceptual low-enrichment uranium (LEU) fuel design has been developed for the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at Idaho National Laboratory. The ATR is currently fueled with a high-enrichment fuel but is slated to be converted to LEU under programs led by the National Nuclear Security Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy. A conceptual LEU fuel design, the Enhanced LEU Fuel (ELF), has been developed assuming power peaking control through the use of variable fuel meat thicknesses and no use of burnable poison. In initial work, this design was shown to satisfy performance requirements for ATR operation. Following these design calculations, a safety analysis process was initiated to demonstrate that the ELF design would successfully meet safety limits for postulated accident conditions. Those calculations, performed using RELAP5 and ATR-SINDA, require physics analysis to provide spatial power distributions and kinetics parameters for various core operations configurations. This article describes the findings of the physics analysis and provides predictions for the behavior of a LEU-fueled version of ATR, and compares these to calculations of the performance of the current high-enrichment uranium fuel.