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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.
Dennis Nikitaev, L. Dale Thomas
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 1 | December 2022 | Pages S96-S106
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.2021768
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Water, ammonia, and other volatiles that can be used for propellant have been found on the Moon, and the technology that will be used to extract them has been laboratory tested. One of the considered propulsion systems for a crewed mission to Mars is nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP). However, current reference missions consider hydrogen as the main propellant, which is technologically difficult to store. Electrolysis units are required to process the lunar water to separate it into oxygen and hydrogen, which is only 1/8 of the mass of water mined. Due to these challenges, a preliminary analysis of alternative propellant nuclear thermal propulsion (A-NTP) expander cycle engines was made. A-NTP engine models that produced 25 000 lbf of thrust, which is comparable to the baseline hydrogen NTP engines, were constructed in Simulink for preliminary analysis, which yielded an Isp of 320.4 s for water and 381.6 s for ammonia. Although this Isp is lower than the most efficient chemical engines, since water and ammonia are used directly and are stored as such, a propellant tank volume decrease of up to 76.1% for water and 69.5% for ammonia is possible. This will decrease the number of launches, given that the tanks are not fully tanked at time of launch and lunar resources are used to fill the tanks completely.