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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.
D. R. Marr, D. A. Cantley, J. C. Chandler, D. C. McCurry, R. P. Omberg
Nuclear Technology | Volume 42 | Number 2 | February 1979 | Pages 133-143
Technical Paper | Thorium Fuel Cycle in a Breeder Economy / Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A32143
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Three studies were performed to evaluate the breeding ratio of fast breeders containing thorium. In a study of a small breeder, thorium metal and thorium oxide core designs were found to have similar breeding ratios. The slight advantage exhibited by the metal design was not considered significant, since the design was based on a limited amount of thorium metal swelling data. In a study of a 1200-MW(electric) plant, a plutonium-uranium oxide design was compared to a uranium-thorium metal design. The uranium-thorium design had a lower breeding ratio but also had a negative sodium void effect. In the third study, the effect of replacing thorium oxide radial blankets with thorium metal radial blankets was evaluated. This was found to have little effect on the breeding ratio.