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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.
Yasuki Kowata, Nobuo Fukumura
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 99 | Number 4 | August 1988 | Pages 299-312
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE88-A23560
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Using the substitution method combined with the pulsed neutron technique, coolant void reactivities of PuO2-UO2 fuel lattices in pressure-tube-type heavy water reactors have been determined as functions of PuO2 enrichment in PuO2-UO2 (0.54 and 0.87 wt%), fissile content of plutonium (91 and 75% fissile plutonium), lattice pitch (Vm/Vf: 7.4 and 9.9), and coolant void fraction (0, 30, 70, 87, and 100%). The reference loading of 1.2 wt% enriched UO2 clusters was progressively replaced by PuO2-UO2 test clusters. The void reactivities were obtained from Simmons and King’s formula in which correction was made for a change of the prompt generation time. As decay constants can be maintained invariable due to substitution, buckling differences were analyzed by the first-order perturbation method, on the assumption that lattices are homogeneous and no difference in diffusion coefficients exists between the two lattices. Void reactivities of test lattices were determined with an accuracy of ∼10% when the minimum number of test fuel clusters was ∼5% of the total. The void reactivity shifted farther to the negative side as the proportion of fissile plutonium was increasingly in the PuO2-UO2 fuel of the same enrichment of plutonium.