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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.
A. M. Perry, H. F. Bauman
Nuclear Technology | Volume 8 | Number 2 | February 1970 | Pages 208-219
Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT70-A28626
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
As presently conceived at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and described in this issue, the single-fluid Molten-Salt Breeder Reactor, operating on the 232Th-233 U fuel cycle and based on a reference design, has a breeding ratio of ∼1.06, specific fissile inventory of 1.5 kg/MW(e), a fuel doubling time of ∼20 years, and fuel cycle costs of ∼0.7 mill/kWh(e). Start-up may be accomplished with either enriched uranium or plutonium, with little effect on fuel cost; the breeding ratio, averaged over reactor life, is reduced 0.01 to 0.02 relative to the equilibrium cycle. Operated as a converter, with limited chemical processing, the reactor may have a conversion ratio in the range 0.8 to 0.9 with fuel cycle costs of 0.7 to 0.9 mill/kWh(e).