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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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.
Alexander Jesser, Kai Krycki, Martin Frank
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 7 | July 2022 | Pages 1114-1123
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.2016018
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The measurement facility QUANTOM is being developed for the material analysis of radioactive waste packed up in 200-L drums. QUANTOM enables a spatially resolved elemental analysis based on prompt gamma neutron activation analysis. The evaluation of the spatially resolved gamma spectra relies on the calculation of partial cross sections. Hereby, the neutron flux spectrum enters as a parameter, which needs to be simulated in the full three-dimensional geometry of the measurement facility. To ensure that the simulations can be carried out within an acceptable time frame, we use a deterministic neutron transport code specially developed for this purpose based on the SPN approximation of the linear Boltzmann equation. The following question arises: Does the approximation in the neutron transport model still allow a calculation of the partial cross sections at a sufficient level of accuracy. Therefore, in this paper, we study the calculation of partial cross sections in light of the approximation in the neutron transport model in the geometrical setting of the measurement facility. In a simulation study we consider four typical matrix materials and compare cross sections for all elements of the periodic table to reference results obtained by Monte Carlo simulations.