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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.
S. Esnouf, A. Dannoux-Papin, E. Bossé, V. Roux-Serret, C. Chapuzet, F. Cochin, J. Blancher
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 2 | February 2022 | Pages 347-356
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1896927
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission and Orano have developed a modeling tool named the Simulation Tool Of RAdiolysis Gas Emission (STORAGE) for assessing gas generation of intermediate-level waste. The first version of this model was designed to estimate gas (more specifically hydrogen) generation by radiolysis of organic materials contained in waste packages.
To verify the validity of the model, a series of measurements was performed on U, Pu–contaminated solid waste issued from the Orano plutonium laboratories at the MELOX facility. Twenty-one drums containing technological waste (gloves, bags, filters, metallic parts, etc.) packaged inside polyvinyl chloride sleeves were set up and hydrogen production was measured over a period of more than 1 year. Several levels of contamination and organic content were studied.
STORAGE calculations are conservative and most of the time in good agreement with experimental measurements with the uncertainties. As expected, the simplest cases (organic waste or filtering media) are well described by the model. The data are obviously more widely dispersed when the waste is composed of a mixture of organic materials and metal. Nevertheless, an understanding of the waste (package composition) allows a fairly precise description and ultimately a satisfactory estimation of the hydrogen production rate.