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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
Standards Program
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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Russia withdraws from 25-year-old weapons-grade plutonium agreement
Russia’s lower house of Parliament, the State Duma, approved a measure to withdraw from a 25-year-old agreement with the United States to cut back on the leftover plutonium from Cold War–era nuclear weapons.
F. Franceschini (Westinghouse), G. Grasso (ENEA), P. Ferroni (Westinghouse)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 137-142
A companion paper at this conference (Ref. 1) describes the Westinghouse LFR, a Generation IV, ultra-compact, highly simplified, passively safe, scalable reactor plant with economics, safety, and scalability as the key elements informing its design. Traditionally, engineering decisions have made the plant more or less safe with an inverse relationship between cost and safety. The LFR breaks this paradigm with design choices aiming at a safer plant while improving economics. The fuel selection is a case in point, as elucidated by this study which illustrates the potential of various fuels to meet various core design objectives and fuel cost metrics. In particular, it is shown that uranium nitride (UN) is the favorite fuel option for the LFR. Metal fuel (U-10Zr) is a suitable alternative, especially for the startup core given the more significant experience in the U.S. which would likely accelerate its qualification relative to UN. This study shows that UN is superior to uranium silicide (U3Si2) with a comfortable margin in the breakeven cost for 15N enrichment. All advanced fuel candidates have significantly superior fuel cycle cost (FCC) performance relative to UO2 and are particularly suitable options for extending the fuel cycle length.