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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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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
Vogtle-3 shuts down for valve issue
One of the new Vogtle units in Georgia was shut down unexpectedly on Monday last week for a valve issue that has since been investigated and repaired. According to multiple local news outlets, Georgia Power reported on July 17 that Unit 3 was back in service.
Southern Company spokesperson Jacob Hawkins confirmed that Vogtle-3 went off line at 9:25 p.m. local time on July 8 “due to lowering water levels in the steam generators caused by a valve issue on one of the three main feedwater pumps.”
J. P. Schapira, R. K. Singhal
Nuclear Technology | Volume 128 | Number 1 | October 1999 | Pages 25-34
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT99-A3011
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Among the natural thorium resources, monazite and the residues of rare-earth extraction will very likely be exploited first in case of a significant use of thorium-based nuclear fuels. The different waste streams have been identified from the present industrial practices used in the production of nuclear grade thorium from monazite extracted from beach sands. The radionuclides of utmost importance in various waste streams are 232Th, 228Ra, and 220Rn from the thorium series and 238U, 230Th, 226Ra, and 222Rn from the uranium series. There are three important steps, where the major radioactivity is generated. It is found that the total amount of solid wastes generated for the production of 1 t of thorium metal is ~10 t, which is ~50 times less than in the case of 1 t of uranium production. Among them, long-lived wastes represent a small volume and could be disposed of in a deep geological repository, as for alpha-active reprocessing wastes. The raw materials at the mining site are lower by one to two orders of magnitude in the general case of high-grade thorium ore in comparison to the present commercially exploited uranium ore. The short- and long-term impact of these wastes on the environment and radiotoxicity has been calculated. It has been found that the short- and long-term impact for the public is about two orders of magnitude lower than for the equivalent front-end uranium cycles. On the contrary, inhalation and ingestion dose commitments for an adult are about five and two times higher, respectively, in the case of pure thorium as compared to the equivalent uranium case.