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Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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Latest News
Argonne research aims to improve nuclear fuel recycling and metal recovery
Servis
Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory are investigating a used nuclear fuel recycling technology that could lead to a scaled-down and more efficient approach to metal recovery, according to a recent news article from the lab. The research, led by Argonne radiochemist Anna Servis with funding from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), could have an impact beyond the nuclear fuel cycle and improve other high-value metal processing, such as rare earth recovery, according to Argonne.
The research: Servis’s work is being carried out under ARPA-E’s CURIE (Converting UNF Radioisotopes Into Energy) program. The specific project—Radioisotope Capture Intensification Using Rotating Packed Bed Contactors—started in 2023 and is scheduled to end in January 2026.
In Sun Park, In Je Kang, Kyu-Sun Chung
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 77 | Number 6 | August 2021 | Pages 429-436
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.1929759
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Although plasma-facing components composed of tungsten are less likely to generate dust when compared to other materials, dust generation is still possible during severe transient phenomena in fusion devices. The generation of tungsten dusts was experimentally investigated by exposing tungsten targets to a transient heat flux factor (FHF) simulated by a high-energy pulsed laser so that the rate of dust generation would be analyzed. The rate of dust generation is observed to be increased linearly with respect to FHF: G [mg/min] = C (FEX – F0), where FEX is the experimental value of FHF, F0 is the threshold FHF, and C [mg∙m2∙s1/2/min∙MJ] = 0.0031 ± 0.0002. FHF indicates that the characteristics of dusts such as size and FHF are similar to those observed in several toroidal fusion devices. The threshold of FHF for dust generation was also observed as 41 MJ/m2∙ s1/2, which is similar to that of the international thermonuclear experimental reactor ITER (50 MJ/m2∙ s1/2).
