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New laws offer nuclear industry incentives for existing power plant uprates
This year, the U.S. nuclear industry received a much-needed economic boost that could help preserve operating nuclear power plants and incentivize upgrades that extend their lifespan and power output.
Signed into law in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act offers production tax credits (PTCs) for existing nuclear power plants and either PTCs or investment tax credits (ITCs) for new carbon-free generation. These credits could make power uprates—increasing the maximum power level at which a commercial plant may operate—a much more appealing option for utilities.
John T. Mihalczo
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 20 | Number 1 | September 1964 | Pages 60-65
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE20-60
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Prompt-neutron lifetimes have been determined for unreflected and unmoderated critical assemblies of enriched-uranium metal (93.15% U235) in cylindrical geometry. Five solid cylinders ranging in diameter from 7 to 15 in. and three cylindrical annuli having outside diameters as large as 15 in. were assembled to delayed critical and their prompt-neutron decay constants measured by the Rossi-α technique. The prompt-neutron lifetimes were determined from the measured decay constants and effective delayed-neutron fractions obtained by Sn multigroup transport-theory calculations, which predicted the multiplication constants of all assemblies to within 1/2%. For the solid cylinders the lifetime value is 6.25 ± 0.04 nsec, which, within the limits of experimental errors, is independent of the dimensions of the cylinders and agrees with the lifetime of 6.2 ± 0.1 nsec obtained from earlier prompt-neutron decay-constant measurements with a uranium sphere (Godiva I). For the cylindrical annuli the lifetime varied from 7.0 to 8.0 nsec. The increase in the lifetime value over that of the solid cylinders is due to the time required for neutrons to cross the center void.