ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
ARPA-E announces $40 million to develop transmutation technologies for UNF
The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) announced $40 million in funding to develop cutting-edge technologies to enable the transmutation of used nuclear fuel into less-radioactive substances. According to ARPA-E, the new initiative addresses one of the agency’s core goals as outlined by Congress: to provide transformative solutions to improve the management, cleanup, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.
Tetsuya Mouri, Masayuki Naganuma, Shigeo Ohki
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 4 | April 2023 | Pages 532-548
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2133514
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper deals with a conceptual study on a plutonium (Pu) and minor actinide (MA) burning fast reactor core for the distant future phaseout of a fast reactor fuel cycle after it is commercialized and used for a long time. This burning core aims to reduce the Pu and MA inventories contained in the fuel cycle through multiple recycling. A key point for the core design is the degradation of Pu and MAs during multiple recycling. This degradation affects the feasibility of the nuclear design by increasing the sodium void reactivity and decreasing the absolute value of the Doppler constant. A feasible core concept was found by incorporating the following three factors to improve the reactivity coefficients: core geometry flattening, fuel burnup reduction, and use of silicon carbide (SiC) in the cladding and wrapper tubes. Notably, softening the neutron spectrum using the SiC structural material not only improved the reactivity coefficients but also indirectly mitigated the degradation of Pu and MAs. Consequently, the designed core allowed for multiple recycling to continue until the Pu and MAs reduced significantly, particularly by about 99% in a phaseout scenario starting from a fast reactor fleet of 30-GWe nuclear power capacity. Fast reactors were found to have the potential to become self-contained energy systems that can minimize the inventories of Pu they produced themselves, as well as long-lived MAs. Fast reactors can be among the important options for environmental burden reduction in the future.