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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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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Charles Forsberg, Guiqiu (Tony) Zheng, Ronald G. Ballinger, Stephen T. Lam
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 11 | November 2020 | Pages 1778-1801
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1691400
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Recent developments in high-magnetic-field fusion systems have created large incentives to develop flibe (Li2BeF4) salt fusion blankets that have four functions: (1) convert the high energy of fusion neutrons into heat for the power system, (2) convert lithium into tritium—the fusion fuel, (3) shield the magnets against radiation, and (4) cool the first wall that separates the plasma from the salt blanket. Flibe is the same coolant proposed for fluoride-salt-cooled high-temperature reactors that use clean flibe coolant and graphite-matrix coated-particle fuel. Flibe is also the coolant proposed for some molten salt reactors (MSRs) where the fuel is dissolved in the coolant. The multiple applications for flibe as a coolant create large incentives for cooperative fusion-fission programs for development of the underlying science, design tools, technology (pumps, instrumentation, salt purification, materials, tritium removal, etc.), and supply chains. Other high-temperature molten salts are being developed for alternative MSR systems and for advanced Gen-III concentrated solar power (CSP) systems. The overlapping characteristics of flibe salt with these other salt systems create significant incentives for cooperative fusion-fission-solar programs in multiple areas.
We describe the fission and fusion flibe-cooled systems, what has created this synergism, what is different and the same between fission and fusion in terms of using flibe, and the common challenges. We review (1) the characteristics of flibe salts, (2) the status of the technology, (3) the options for tritium capture and control in the salt, heat exchangers, and secondary heat transfer loops, and (4) the coupling to power cycles with heat storage. The technology overlap between flibe systems and other high-temperature MSR and CSP salt systems is described. This defines where there are opportunities for cooperative programs across fission, fusion, and CSP salt programs.