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Center for Used Fuel Research: Building confidence in storage and transport
Used nuclear fuel storage and transportation have reached a critical juncture.
Dozens of utilities need reliable data on how used nuclear fuel performs in dry storage casks and canisters to extend regulatory licenses at sites across the United States. Likewise, the Department of Energy expects to take ownership of the used nuclear fuel—termed “spent nuclear fuel” in the laws and regulations governing its stewardship—and transfer it to one or more federal staging facilities for management and disposition.
Meanwhile, dozens of reactor companies are testing prototypes of advanced reactors and advanced reactor fuels. Eventually, regulators and industry must also verify the safety and security of storage methods for these advanced fuel types.
To help address these challenges, the DOE established the Center for Used Fuel Research (CUFR) in January 2026 for work related to the long-term storage and transport of used nuclear fuel.
Joseph L. Bottini, Caleb S. Brooks
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 12 | December 2023 | Pages 1987-2001
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2156244
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Two-Fluid Model (TFM) has long been the backbone of engineering-scale two-phase flow simulation in system-analysis codes and computational fluid dynamics codes. The classical TFM is limited in how it can capture the differences in the transport of small and large bubbles. The two-group TFM provides the ability to specify the unique transport characteristics of small and large bubbles separately. Expanding to two sets of conservation equations for the two bubble groups presents the additional challenge of bubble group accounting as bubbles can cross the group boundary. The three mass transfer terms in the two-group TFM are evaluated for flashing, condensing, and boiling flows using a partitioning method. The axial trends in the source terms are examined for these flow conditions with the available intergroup models. Two-group interphase models are implemented and evaluated against experimental data for flashing, condensing, and boiling flows with accurate two-group results. The capabilities of the two-group TFM are evaluated for these flow types, demonstrating the ability to predict two-group vapor properties without the need for flow regime transitions.