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NRC looks to leverage previous approvals for large LWRs
During this time of resurging interest in nuclear power, many conversations have centered on one fundamental problem: Electricity is needed now, but nuclear projects (in recent decades) have taken many years to get permitted and built.
In the past few years, a bevy of new strategies have been pursued to fix this problem. Workforce programs that seek to laterally transition skilled people from other industries, plans to reuse the transmission infrastructure at shuttered coal sites, efforts to restart plants like Palisades or Duane Arnold, new reactor designs that build on the legacy of research done in the early days of atomic power—all of these plans share a common throughline: leveraging work already done instead of starting over from square one to get new plants designed and built.
Elmar Eidelpes, Luis F. Ibarra, Ricardo A. Medina
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 8 | August 2019 | Pages 1095-1118
Regular Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1575127
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study presents two statistical models that were developed to estimate the expected peak cladding hoop stress (CHS) and the amount of hydrogen in pressurized water reactor (PWR) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) rod cladding. Peak CHS is caused by high rod internal pressure during vacuum drying performed when transferring SNF to dry storage. During in-reactor operation of PWR fuel, the rod cladding tends to corrode and uptake hydrogen. The hydrogen content and CHS control hydride-related cladding embrittlement at low material temperatures. The two methodologies developed in this study were used to create a generic rod database with information on PWR SNF conditions. This database provides information on 100 000 randomly selected rods that form part of the current U.S. SNF inventory. According to the statistical results, the expected hydrogen content of PWR rod cladding is in a sensitive interval that may facilitate hydride reorientation. However, the modeling results suggest that the expected peak CHS of the selected rods is significantly below 90 MPa, which is the estimated lower bound stress necessary to trigger significant radial hydride embrittlement in cladding after being cooled to room temperature. Further, the results indicate that hydride embrittlement due to excessive hydrogen in cladding is unlikely. Therefore, a low probability of hydride-related embrittlement of PWR SNF cladding currently stored in the U.S. inventory is anticipated, even under consideration of low cladding temperatures after long-term SNF dry storage.