ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
60 Years of U: Perspectives on resources, demand, and the evolving role of nuclear energy
Recent years have seen growing global interest in nuclear energy and rising confidence in the sector. For the first time since the early 2000s, there is renewed optimism about the industry’s future. This change is driven by several major factors: geopolitical developments that highlight the need for secure energy supplies, a stronger focus on resilient energy systems, national commitments to decarbonization, and rising demand for clean and reliable electricity.
A. R. Wazzan, A. Villalobos, D. Okrent
Nuclear Technology | Volume 70 | Number 2 | August 1985 | Pages 285-289
Technical Note | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33654
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A computer code developed earlier by Villalobos et al. to predict fission gas behavior in uranium oxide fuel under steady-state irradiation conditions and where bubble gas resolution is represented with the single knock-on model (SKO) is modified to replace the SKO model with the complete bubble destruction model (CBD). The CBD model required that bubble nucleation be included in the present analysis. The revised code is used to compute gas release and total swelling. Both are found to be insensitive to whether they are obtained with the CBD or the SKO option. This is mainly because at low atomic percent of burnup, total swelling is dominated by the grain-edge bubble gas contribution, and release is dependent on the formation of a complete grainface/grain-edge tunnel network—factors that are not much affected by either the SKO or CBD models. At higher atomic percent of burnup, intragranular swelling, which can be sensitive to the resolution model, contributes more to swelling. But even then, computations at 1.0 at.% burnup suggest total swelling will continue to be dominated by grain-edge gas. These results suggest that in modeling swelling and release in irradiated uranium dioxide fuel, the simpler SKO resolution model is satisfactory.