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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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.
Fumihisa Nagase, Takashi Ohtomo, Hiroshi Uetsuka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 3 | March 2022 | Pages 484-493
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1905472
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A control rod alloy composed of silver (Ag), indium (In), and cadmium (Cd) was heated in argon or oxygen at 1073 to 1673 K for 60 to 3600 s. Then, the release behaviors of the elements were analyzed. The elemental release was quite limited below the liquefaction temperature. In argon, almost the entire Cd content was released within 3600 s at >1173 K and within 60 s at >1573 K while the released fractions of Ag and In were <3% and <8%, respectively. In oxygen, the release of Cd, which was quite small at temperatures lower than 1573 K, largely increased to ~30% to 50% at 1673 K for short periods. The releases of Ag and In were also small in oxygen under the analyzed conditions. The comparison with the experimental data suggests that conventional empirical release models may underestimate the Cd release at lower temperatures just after control rod failure in severe accidents.