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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
Senate EPW Committee to hold Nieh nomination hearing
Nieh
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a nomination hearing Wednesday for Ho Nieh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as commission at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Trump nominated Nieh on July 30 to serve as NRC commissioner the remainder of a term that will expire June 30, 2029, as Nuclear NewsWire previously reported.
Nieh has been vice president of regulatory affairs at Southern Nuclear since 2021, though since June 2024 he has been at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations as a loaned executive.
A return to the NRC: If confirmed by the Senate, Nieh would be returning to the NRC after three previous stints totaling nearly 20 years.
W. Van Snyder
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 9 | September 2022 | Pages 1416-1432
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.2024023
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new form for metallic nuclear reactor fuel is proposed consisting of finely divided particles (tens of micrometers) mixed with sodium for thermal bond. Fuel pins filled with this form of fuel would have greater fuel density than with solid slugs fabricated at 75% smear density. Greater fuel density reduces enrichment requirements for initial fuel loading. A larger surface-to-volume ratio allows more fission product gases and metallic fission products to diffuse out of fuel particles, resulting in less swelling, greater burnup before processing, and simple preliminary thermomechanical spent fuel processing steps that might be used several times before the more expensive pyroelectric process develolped for the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II). Less frequent pyroelectric processing, simple preliminary processing, and a larger surface-to-volume ratio reduce total processing cost. Preliminary processing produces separate fission products, in particular cesium and strontium, in metallic rather than salt or mineral form, thereby simplifying and reducing storage cost. Intrinsically structurally weak fuel would not rupture fuel pin cladding by swelling. The expense and complexity of the process would be offset by reduced total system cost.