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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 8–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Ho Nieh, TVA board members, and nuclear fuel recycling bill head to Senate floor
Nieh
Ho Nieh, the Trump administration’s nominee to be a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and four new board members of the Tennessee Valley Authority were approved in a vote today by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and head to the Senate floor for a final vote.
The committee also voted to advance to the Senate floor the Nuclear REFUEL Act of 2025 (S. 2082), which would smooth the regulatory pathway for recycling used nuclear fuel.
President Donald nominated Nieh on July 30 to serve as NRC commissioner for the remainder of a term set to expire June 30, 2029, which was held by former NRC commissioner Chris Hanson, who Trump fired in June.
Guillaume Martin, Maxime Guyot (CEA), Fréderic Laugier (EDF DCN), Gérald Senentz (Framatome), Guillaume Krivtchik (CEA), Bertrand Carlier (ORANO), David Lecarpentier, Frédéric Descamps (EdF R&D), Christine Chabert, Romain Eschbach (CEA)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 103-112
In France, the COSI6 software can simulate prospective scenarios of nuclear energy evolution. Nuclear scenarios focused these last years on the development of SFR technology. However, SFR are more expensive to build than thermal reactors. In case SFR would not become economically competitive in the next decades, MOX spent fuels would pile-up in the backend of the fuel cycle, unless alternative solutions of plutonium management in PWR were found. In this study, advanced EPR (European Pressurized water Reactor) fuel designs are applied to enable plutonium multi-recycling and stabilization of all spent fuel: CORAIL refers to fuel assemblies containing LEU and MOX rods, and MIX (also called MOXEUS) to assemblies where fuel rods are composed of plutonium mixed with enriched uranium.
Scenarios results reveal that introducing MIX and CORAIL in EPR by the middle of the century can lead to a fast stabilization of spent fuel and plutonium inventories. With respect to open cycle, more minor actinides (MA) accumulate (about +70%), but the production of transuranic elements (Pu + MA) remains almost 3 times less. Furthermore, all high-level wastes are now packaged for long-term storage.
Besides, spent fuels still contain significant quantities of fissile uranium. In MIX scenarios however, this uranium may be enriched and easily recycled into dedicated EPR for efficient natural uranium savings. In this case, the resource balance is significantly better than in open cycle (-30%). Multi-recycling in PWR appears therefore to be a viable temporary solution, allowing for spent fuels and wastes management until we expect the running out of natural uranium.