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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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ANS joins others in seeking to discuss SNF/HLW impasse
The American Nuclear Society joined seven other organizations to send a letter to Energy Secretary Christopher Wright on July 8, asking to meet with him to discuss “the restoration of a highly functioning program to meet DOE’s legal responsibility to manage and dispose of the nation’s commercial and legacy defense spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW).”
H. Bairiot, L. Aerts, E. Trauwaert, J. Vangeel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 23 | Number 3 | September 1974 | Pages 240-255
Technical Paper | Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT74-A15917
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The economics of the plutonium fueling of a thorium-cycle high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) have been investigated. This study showed that once-through cycles are more profitable than cycles with the 233U recycling in the fissile particles and cycles with the 233U recycling in the fertile particles, if limitation of age factors are applied and if core power densities are fixed. There is an economic advantage in using plutonium in once-through cycles once its price drops below 9 $/g Puf. The highest plutonium loading per particle provides the most attractive fuel cycle cost during the initial period when the fabrication costs are high. In the first irradiation test, which was carried out in the R 2 reactor (Studsvik-Sweden), burnups of 200 000 MWd/MTM 360 000 MWd/MTM at temperatures of 1850 and 1200°C were reached. In a second test, the center rods of two DRAGON reactor fuel elements were built with plutonium fuel. After irradiation equivalent to 224 days at full power, there was no damage to the particles. Finally, three batches of particles with diluted and undiluted kernels were irradiated during 45 equivalent full power days by KFA/Jülich. The postirradiation results were consistent with no fission gas release and no breakage event. A migration of plutonium occurred to a small extent up to the SiC layer in some of the particles.