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The busyness of the nuclear fuel supply chain
Ken Petersenpresident@ans.org
With all that is happening in the industry these days, the nuclear fuel supply chain is still a hot topic. The Russian assault in Ukraine continues to upend the “where” and “how” of attaining nuclear fuel—and it has also motivated U.S. legislators to act.
Two years into the Russian war with Ukraine, things are different. The Inflation Reduction Act was passed in 2022, authorizing $700 million in funding to support production of high-assay low-enriched uranium in the United States. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy this January issued a $500 million request for proposals to stimulate new HALEU production. The Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024 includes $2.7 billion in funding for new uranium enrichment production. This funding was diverted from the Civil Nuclear Credits program and will only be released if there is a ban on importing Russian uranium into the United States—which could happen by the time this column is published, as legislation that bans Russian uranium has passed the House as of this writing and is headed for the Senate. Also being considered is legislation that would sanction Russian uranium. Alternatively, the Biden-Harris administration may choose to ban Russian uranium without legislation in order to obtain access to the $2.7 billion in funding.
Chuan Li, Jian Zhang, Chao Fang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 200 | Number 1 | October 2017 | Pages 45-53
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1348874
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this paper, the methodology of studying the chemical forms of important fission products (FPs) in the primary circuit of a pebble-bed modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTR-PM) is given, and the chemical forms of important FPs cesium (Cs), strontium (Sr), argentum (Ag), iodine (I), and corresponding amounts are calculated under the condition of equilibrium core of HTR-PM considering the O2 impurity in the helium coolant of the primary circuit. It is shown that for the Cs element, Cs2O2 and Cs2O may undergo a phase transformation between their nongaseous state and gaseous state, respectively, and for the Sr element, the conversion from SrO2 to SrO is obvious with the increase of temperature. In contrast, the reaction between Ag and O reacts thoroughly, and AgO is very stable under different temperature conditions. There is a turning point in the chemical reaction between Cs and I with the increase of temperature, which illustrates that there exists competition between the I-Cs reaction and the O-Cs reaction. These results provide clear chemical form information of the important FPs in the primary circuit, which is significant to understanding the chemical reaction behavior of radionuclides in HTR-PM.