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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
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2023)
February 6–9, 2023
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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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Jan 2023
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
February 2023
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
January 2023
Latest News
Nuclear energy: enabling production of food, fiber, hydrocarbon biofuels, and negative carbon emissions
In the 1960s, Alvin Weinberg at Oak Ridge National Laboratory initiated a series of studies on nuclear agro-industrial complexes1 to address the needs of the world’s growing population. Agriculture was a central component of these studies, as it must be. Much of the emphasis was on desalination of seawater to provide fresh water for irrigation of crops. Remarkable advances have lowered the cost of desalination to make that option viable in countries like Israel. Later studies2 asked the question, are there sufficient minerals (potassium, phosphorous, copper, nickel, etc.) to enable a prosperous global society assuming sufficient nuclear energy? The answer was a qualified “yes,” with the caveat that mineral resources will limit some technological options. These studies were defined by the characteristic of looking across agricultural and industrial sectors to address multiple challenges using nuclear energy.
Jeremy L. Gustafson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 6 | June 2021 | Pages 882-884
Technical Summary | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1890991
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
As future U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) missions aim for destinations farther out into the solar system, space nuclear propulsion (SNP), and in particular nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP), is the only feasible near-term technology able to provide specific impulses of 900 s or greater and thrust in the range of tens of thousands of pounds. To maximize the success of the SNP program as a whole, a Fuel and Moderator Development Plan (FMDP) was created to mature mission critical technology, such as the reactor fuel form and moderator material. This technical note details the conceptual testing reference design that provides the basis for the FMDP for future design and testing activities to meet NASA’s goals.
Through this work BWX Technologies, Inc. and its subsidiaries, referred to as BWXT, continue to be an integral part of government space nuclear programs and has historically been a part of major design, manufacturing, and testing developments. As an example, during the 1990s BWXT supported fuel development for the Space NTP (SNTP) program, an advanced technology development effort aimed at providing the nation with a new and dramatically higher performing rocket engine that would more than double the performance of the best conventional chemical rocket engines. Since 2017, BWXT has been participating in the NASA SNP program for the low-enrichment uranium NTP rocket engine as part of its Game Changing Development feasibility conceptual design program and now more recently Technology Demonstration Mission.