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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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NNSA awards BWXT $1.5B defense fuels contract
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded BWX Technologies a contract valued at $1.5 billion to build a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Tennessee in support of the administration’s efforts to build out a domestic supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense-related nuclear fuel.
I. E. Knudsen, H. E. Hootman and N. M. Levitz
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 20 | Number 3 | November 1964 | Pages 259-265
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE64-A19567
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This new, dry process employs fluidization and particle-coating techniques and involves direct conversion of uranium hexafluoride to a solid, (uranyl fluoride), by hydrolysis with steam followed by reduction of the uranyl fluoride to the dioxide by reaction with steam-hydrogen mixtures. Process studies were carried out in 3-in.-diameter Monel reactors. The uranium-hexafluoride/steam reaction was conducted continuously at relatively low temperatures, about 200 C, at a uranium hexafluoride rate equivalent to 174 lb uranium h-1 ft-2 of reactor cross section and a steam rate of about 3.25 times the stoichiometric requirement. Seed addition was required to offset particle-growth effects. Uranium losses to the off-gas were less than 0.01% of the hexafluoride fed. Reduction of the uranyl fluoride to the oxide was demonstrated in batch tests. Low-fluoride (<250 parts/106 residual) material was consistently produced in four hours at 650 C and in seven hours at 600 C using a 50:50 mixture of steam and hydrogen. Pellet-fabrication tests on dioxide powders ground to -325 mesh gave sintered densities of about 94% of theoretical.