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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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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Leading the charge: INL’s role in advancing HALEU production
Idaho National Laboratory is playing a key role in helping the U.S. Department of Energy meet near-term needs by recovering HALEU from federal inventories, providing critical support to help lay the foundation for a future commercial HALEU supply chain. INL also supports coordination of broader DOE efforts, from material recovery at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to commercial enrichment initiatives.
Daniel A. Vega, Taku Watanabe, Susan B. Sinnott, Simon R. Phillpot, James S. Tulenko
Nuclear Technology | Volume 165 | Number 3 | March 2009 | Pages 308-312
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A4103
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A proof-of-principle study is presented in which the results of atomic-level simulations of the thermal expansion and thermal conductivity of UO2 are integrated into the fuel performance code FRAPCON. The beginning-of-life (BOL) thermal conductivity profile of a fuel pellet and the evolution of the pellet expansion over its lifetime are determined. It is found that (a) modifying FRAPCON to accept input from atomistic simulations (or elsewhere, such as new experiments or other calculations) is relatively straightforward, at least for these two properties, and (b) the properties determined from atomistic simulations yield predictions in FRAPCON that are in good agreement for the BOL thermal conductivity, but much less satisfactory for the pellet expansion.