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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
R. W. Conn, F. Kantrowitz, W. F. Vogelsang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 49 | Number 3 | August 1980 | Pages 458-468
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A17693
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For hybrid reactors that would directly enrich light water reactor fuel bundles with 239Pu, the fuel distribution across a bundle can be made to be more uniform than when 233U is produced from thorium. As expected, more fuel is produced from 238U than from 232Th per fusion event, although the fuel production per unit thermal power can be greater in the thorium-uranium cycle. The hybrid can be used to produce fissile fuel at a secure fuel production, reprocessing, and fabrication facility. The high support ratio of the hybrid would then allow 10 to 80 external fission reactors to be supported per secure site, depending on the conversion ratio of the off-site fission reactors. It is found that fuel to be shipped away from a secure site can be rendered resistant to diversion by irradiation to a burnup of 0.4 MWd/t in a low power fission reactor on-site.
