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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.
Egemen M. Aras, Arjun Earthperson, Mihai A. Diaconeasa
Nuclear Technology | Volume 212 | Number 2 | February 2026 | Pages 365-382
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2025.2511510
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) tools have been in use for over six decades, providing essential data to support risk-informed decision making. However, like all tools, PRA tools must keep pace with advances in computing technology. Here, we propose a systematic methodology to diagnose and enhance PRA tools. The diagnostics phase of this methodology consists of model generation, benchmarking, standard profiling, and deeper profiling. This phase results in representative PRA models, tool performance assessments, identification of code hot spots needing improvement, and a verification platform for comparing PRA tools. The diagnostics findings guide an improvement strategy that may involve optimization, parallel computing, or a combination of both. Demonstration results show speedups of up to five times for a single model, underscoring the significant impact of utilizing available resources for large PRA models. Although the demonstration focuses on the open-source quantification engine SCRAM-CPP, the methodology can be adapted to other PRA tools with minimal effort.