ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
April 2026
Latest News
NN Asks: What hurdles stand in the way of nuclear power’s global expansion?
Jake Jurewicz
Nuclear technology is mature. It provides firm power at scale with minimal externalities and has done so for decades. The core problem isn’t about the technology—it is how the plants are built. Nuclear construction has a well-documented history of cost and schedule overruns. Previous nuclear plants often spent more than twice what was first budgeted, making nuclear among the power technologies with the largest average cost overruns worldwide.
Recent projects illustrate how severe the problem can be. In South Carolina, the V.C. Summer nuclear expansion saw projected costs rise from roughly $10 billion to more than $25 billion before the project was abandoned in 2017, by which time more than $9 billion had already been spent and customers were stuck paying for a site they have yet to benefit from.
J. Sercombe, V. D’Ambrosi, S. Béjaoui, I. Zacharie-Aubrun
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 2 | February 2024 | Pages 269-284
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2188138
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents 2D(r,) simulations of the HBC-4 power-to-melt experiment performed with the fuel performance code ALCYONE. The HBC-4 experiment is one of the two test cases selected for the simulation exercise on past fuel melting experiments of the Power to Melt and Maneuverability (P2M) project. The ramp terminal level (RTL) at peak power node (PPN) has been estimated at 66 kW·m−1 by gamma scanning and 70 kW·m−1 based on online measurements of thermal fluxes. The fuel burnup at PPN was close to 60 GWd/tU−1. The cladding failed during the short holding time at a RTL of 40 s. Fuel melting took place at the pellet center, and in particular, in front of clad cracks.
In this paper, simulations of the HBC-4 power-to-melt experiment are performed using an updated version of the 2D(r,) scheme of ALCYONE where half of the fuel pellet is described. This configuration allows for the modeling of clad failure by iodine stress corrosion cracking and of its consequences on fuel pellet deformation. The modeling of fuel melting relies on thermochemical equilibrium calculations performed with the OpenCalphad Gibbs Energy Minimizer and the Thermodynamics of Advanced Fuels International Database. The simulation without clad failure indicates that the solidus is reached during the HBC-4 experiment but not the liquidus. The simulation with clad failure leads to a small increase in the fuel temperature that is sufficient to reach the liquidus at the pellet center, in agreement with postirradiation examination (PIE). The impact of water ingress in the rod and vaporization at the pellet surface is discussed, showing that it could explain the pronounced swelling of the fuel pellet reported from the PIE.
