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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
NNSA awards BWXT $1.5B defense fuels contract
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded BWX Technologies a contract valued at $1.5 billion to build a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Tennessee in support of the administration’s efforts to build out a domestic supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense-related nuclear fuel.
Bing Hong, Yunqing Bai, Gang Xu, Xiaoliang Zou
Nuclear Technology | Volume 204 | Number 1 | October 2018 | Pages 66-73
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1464820
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Lithium is an attractive coolant for space nuclear reactors due to its good thermal properties and low density. The main objective of this study is to investigate the effect of coolant 6Li concentration on the neutronic parameters of the lithium-cooled space reactor, with the aim to provide an appropriate reference for the purification of lithium coolant and the safety of the lithium-cooled space reactor. The neutronic calculations based on the lithium-cooled reactor are performed using the SuperMC code with the ENDF/B-VII cross-section database. The effects of coolant 6Li concentration were studied over the range of 0 to 8.5 at. % as well as the corresponding effects on the depletion, helium production, neutron spectrum, and temperature reactivity coefficient. The results show that the 6Li concentration of 0.01 at. % in the lithium coolant is appropriate in the lithium-cooled reactor. In this case, the neutronic parameters including the depletion, helium production, and neutron spectrum showed no obvious change compared to that of the pure 7Li, and the coolant reactivity coefficient has a negative effect on reactivity.