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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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The journey of the U.S. fuel cycle
Craig Piercycpiercy@ans.org
While most big journeys begin with a clear objective, they rarely start with an exact knowledge of the route. When commissioning the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson didn’t provide specific “turn right at the big mountain” directions to the Corps of Discovery. He gave goal-oriented instructions: explore the Missouri River, find its source, search for a transcontinental water route to the Pacific, and build scientific and cultural knowledge along the way.
Jefferson left it up to Lewis and Clark to turn his broad, geopolitically motivated guidance into gritty reality.
Similarly, U.S. nuclear policy has begun a journey toward closing the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. There is a clear signal of support for recycling from the Trump administration, along with growing bipartisan excitement in Congress. Yet the precise path remains unclear.
Lothar Wolf, Ashok Rastogi, Dag Wennerberg, Thomas Cron, Edgar Hansjosten
Nuclear Technology | Volume 125 | Number 2 | February 1999 | Pages 136-154
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT99-A2938
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The contribution by the Heiss Dampf Reaktor Safety Program, phase III, to the German containment hydrogen research activities were twofold:1. to confirm the findings of the experiments in the Battelle Model Containment (BMC) in volumes of typically ~100 m3 by similar ones at a larger scale with a total volume of 500 m32. to broaden the database for assessing the emerging modeling strategy for larger scales toward more realistic subcompartment sizes.To supplement the results obtained in the BMC in a proper, controlled manner for additional model development and computer code verification, a total of seven experiments was performed, and the following positions for hydrogen ignition were examined:test group E12.1: hydrogen deflagration in a vertically oriented subcompartmenttest group E12.2: ignition close to the venttest group E12.3: accelerated jet ignition in a horizontal direction.The maximum peak pressure occurred for E12.3.3 at 1.8 bars under typical accelerated jet ignition conditions for 12 vol% initial H2 concentration. Because of larger vent openings, maximum peak pressures were generally lower than observed in BMC tests, whereas maximum temperatures were substantially higher, reaching 1000°C and above. A few comparisons between data and code results from CONTAIN, RALOC-HYDCOM, and CONTAIN/BASSIM computations are shown, indicating the need for further improvements.
