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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.
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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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High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
M. Budi Setiawan, P. Made Udiyani, S. Kuntjoro, I. Husnayani, T. Surbakti
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 12 | December 2020 | Pages 1945-1950
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1720558
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The use of the RSG-GAS research reactor as a transmutation reactor is analyzed to study its effectiveness for transmuting long-lived fission products (LLFPs), particularly 129I and 99Tc. Both radionuclides selected are assumed as discharged from of a 1000-MW(electric) pressurized water reactor (PWR) spent fuel. If these radionuclides are stored in sustainable geologic disposal, they will require high-cost handling due to their special shielding. In one cycle of PWR1000 operation, the 99Tc produced is 43.7 kg and 129I is 9.5 kg in its spent fuel. Considering reactor safety, the maximum target mass permitted to be transmuted in the RSG-GAS is 3.0 kg for the 99Tc and 5.0 kg for the 129I. In 1 year of (five cycles) operation, the 99Tc and 129I targets would be reduced by 126 and 290 g, respectively. Although it has the potentiality to safely transmute LLFP targets in its core, RSG-GAS requires longer irradiation time (about 20 years) to entirely transmute the targets.
