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 Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
Latest Magazine Issues
Jun 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2026
Nuclear Technology
June 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2026
Latest News
Fuel and the nuclear resurgence: The chicken or the egg conundrum
Nuclear power currently appears to have the wind at its back, with growing demand for clean, reliable energy from industry (think data centers) and strong political support for new projects. But getting there still will require a lot of pieces to yet fall into place. It is, as American Nuclear Society CEO Craig Piercy said, a “chicken and egg” problem: Which comes first, the fuel to supply new reactors or the reactors that will create a demand for new fuel?
Kenji Arai, Seijiro Suzuki, Mikihide Nakamaru, Hideaki Heki
Nuclear Technology | Volume 143 | Number 1 | July 2003 | Pages 1-10
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3393
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The long operating cycle simplified boiling water reactor is a reactor concept that pursues both safety and the economy by employing a natural circulation reactor core without a refueling, a passive decay heat removal, and an integrated building for the reactor and turbine. Throughout the entire spectrum of the design basis accident, the reactor core is kept covered by the passive emergency core cooling system. The decay heat is removed by the conventional active low-pressure residual heat removal system. As for a postulated severe accident, the suppression pool water floods the lower part of the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) in the case when core damage occurs, and the in-vessel retention that keeps the melt inside the RPV is achieved by supplying the coolant. The containment adopts a parallel-double-steel-plate structure similar to a hull structure, which contains coolant between the inner and outer walls to absorb the heat transferred from the inside of the containment. Consequently, the containment structure functions as a passive containment cooling system (PCCS) to remove the decay heat in case of an accident. This paper describes the PCCS performance evaluation by using TRAC code to show one of the characteristic plant features. The core damage frequency for internal events was also evaluated to examine the safety level of the plant and to show the adequacy of the safety system design.