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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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Latest News
Leading the charge: INL’s role in advancing HALEU production
Idaho National Laboratory is playing a key role in helping the U.S. Department of Energy meet near-term needs by recovering HALEU from federal inventories, providing critical support to help lay the foundation for a future commercial HALEU supply chain. INL also supports coordination of broader DOE efforts, from material recovery at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to commercial enrichment initiatives.
N. Kaffezakis, D. Kotlyar
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 1 | January 2020 | Pages 48-72
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1616475
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper details the development and optimization of a novel seed blanket fuel assembly designed for utilizing high-conversion Th-233U fuel cycles in the current fleet of pressurized water reactor vessels. Previous studies have revealed the necessity to downrate the total power of cores loaded with seed blanket assemblies due to issues with high power density in the seed regions and thermal-hydraulic failure. This new design features solid packing of the blanket region with the objective of increasing the total power and the economic competitiveness. This paper utilized the Serpent code to study the depletion of various designs of the solid blanket assembly, and THERMO is utilized for thermal-hydraulic analysis. A favorable design was developed that attained an excess 1.7% fissile material from the initial loading and that can be run at a maximum power up to 66% greater than the comparable designs used as references in this paper.
