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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
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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
Virginia utility considers SMRs
Dominion Energy Virginia has issued a request for proposals from leading nuclear companies to study the feasibility of putting a small modular reactor at its North Anna nuclear power plant.
While the utility says it is not a commitment to build an SMR at the site, the RFP is “an important first step in evaluating the technology and the North Anna site to support Dominion Energy customers’ future energy needs consistent with the company’s most recent Integrated Resource Plan.”
Rainer Köster, Günter Rudolph
Nuclear Technology | Volume 96 | Number 2 | November 1991 | Pages 192-201
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT91-A34605
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The release of radionuclides from a waste form into an aqueous phase is often assessed using a source term that considers diffusion and/or congruent matrix dissolution as the rate-determining release mechanisms. As an alternative approach, an equilibrium concept is proposed here that can be applied under the condition that there is no appreciable exchange of fluid with the environment of the waste package / form after the water inflow into the near field for a long time. In this case, all reactions that may give rise to radionuclide release will be completed after a certain time and stable final conditions will be established, in which, for each radionuclide, chemical equilibria exist between the dissolved phase and the various coexisting solid phases. Thereafter, a release of radionuclides from the near field is possible only by escape of the aqueous phase into the environment. Release rate predictions on the basis of this concept are of particular interest for the long-lived radionuclides, especially the actinides. Current efforts are aimed at predicting equilibrium concentrations both in theoretical computations and in experimental measurements. Some results available from corrosion studies on cemented waste forms in salt brine are presented. For specimens doped with cesium, strontium, plutonium, or americium these results show that for each radionuclide a partition equilibrium exists between the corrosion products of cement and the surrounding salt brine, which keeps the concentration in solution at a low level.