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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.
Jihyeon Lee, Kwang Soon Ha, Jungho Hwang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 200 | Number 3 | December 2017 | Pages 241-249
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1372984
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Because most radioactive materials that can escape from a nuclear power plant during a severe accident are expected to be in the form of aerosols, the installation of a filtered containment venting system (FCVS) will be effective to mitigate the risks caused by radioactive aerosols. Aerosol size is a parameter important to the design requirements of an FCVS because the collection efficiency of the venting system depends on the size of the aerosol. In this study, the size distribution change of aerosols by condensation was calculated by using the moment method. Sodium chloride was used as nuclei that underwent condensational growth, and Di-Ethyl-Hexyl-Sebacate (DEHS) was used as a vapor that participated in condensational growth. Then, a condensation experiment was conducted to verify the results calculated by the moment method. However, in an actual severe accident, water vapor in the containment would condense on particles. Therefore, after model verification, calculation was performed with water vapor as the condensation vapor to predict the condensation scenario under a severe accident. This paper reports that the aerosol condensation model based on the moment method can be an auxiliary tool in an existing aerosol modeling program to estimate the particle size distribution change during a severe accident.