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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
Nano to begin drilling next week in Illinois
It’s been a good month for Nano Nuclear in the state of Illinois. On October 7, the Office of Governor J.B. Pritzker announced that the company would be awarded $6.8 million from the Reimagining Energy and Vehicles in Illinois Act to help fund the development of its new regional research and development facility in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook.
Charles Forsberg, Andrew Kadak
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 8 | August 2024 | Pages 1354-1365
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2298157
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Several high-temperature thermal neutron–spectrum pebble bed reactors are being commercialized. China has started up two helium-cooled pebble bed high-temperature reactors. In the United States, the X-Energy helium-cooled and the Kairos Power salt-cooled pebble bed high-temperature reactors will produce spent nuclear fuel (SNF) with burnups exceeding 150 000 MWd per tonne. The reactor fuel in each case consists of small spherical graphite pebbles (4 to 6 cm in diameter) containing thousands of small TRISO (microspheric tri-structural isotropic) fuel particles embedded in the fuel of zone these pebbles.
The unique isotopic, chemical, and physical characteristics of this high-burnup SNF create a technical case to eliminate safeguards based on the low risk for use in nuclear weapons, while maintaining safeguards in terms of risk for use in radiological weapons. These safeguards could be reduced to the simple counting and monitoring of pebbles in storage. Alternatively, there is the option to create a special category with reduced requirements for this SNF in storage, transport, and disposal. No safeguards would be required for a repository with only this type of SNF. Reactor safeguards are required for fresh fuel, partly burnt fuel, and to identify unconventional pebbles with depleted uranium or other materials that might be used to create weapons-useable materials.