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Division Spotlight
Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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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Latest News
ARPA-E announces $40 million to develop transmutation technologies for UNF
The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) announced $40 million in funding to develop cutting-edge technologies to enable the transmutation of used nuclear fuel into less-radioactive substances. According to ARPA-E, the new initiative addresses one of the agency’s core goals as outlined by Congress: to provide transformative solutions to improve the management, cleanup, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.
Stefano Passerini, Mujid S. Kazimi, Eugene Shwageraus
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 178 | Number 2 | October 2014 | Pages 186-201
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-20
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experience with modeling fuel cycle options reveals that the large amount of generated data makes it difficult to understand trade-offs among fuel cycle policies. This paper shows that numerical optimization can be used to better identify impacts of fuel cycle policies and condense the generated data against a few significant criteria. The once-through cycle is considered the baseline case, while advanced technologies with fuel recycling characterize the alternative fuel cycle options available in the future. The options include, among others, recycling the fissile materials from spent light water reactor fuel in fast reactors (FRs) as well as deployment of innovative recycling reactor technologies, such as the 235U initiated FRs. Additionally, a first-of-a-kind optimization scheme for the nuclear fuel cycle analysis is described. Optimization metrics of interest to different stakeholders in the fuel cycle (economics, fuel resource utilization, high-level waste, transuranic materials/proliferation management, and environmental impact) are utilized for two different optimization techniques: a linear one and a stochastic one. Stakeholder elicitation provided sets of relative weights for the identified metrics appropriate to each stakeholder group, which were then used to demonstrate feasibility of arrival at optimum fuel cycle configurations for recycling technologies. The stochastic optimization tool, based on a genetic algorithm, was used to identify noninferior solutions according to Pareto’s dominance approach to optimization. The main trade-off for fuel cycle optimization was found to be between emphasizing economics versus most of the other identified metrics.