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Division Spotlight
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.
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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Jul 2024
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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.
Zahra Papi, Farrokh Khoshahval
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 7 | July 2023 | Pages 1050-1067
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2167462
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
There is an obvious effort to increase the burnup of used fuel assemblies in the Bushehr WWER-1000 Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) in order to improve fuel utilization. The outcomes of this research could result in an increase in the BNPP reactor cycle length, which would lead to improved fuel consumption. Considering the lack of uranium resources and the planning to use new types of fuel in the BNPP, the use of integrated burnable absorber (IBA) materials is of great importance. An analysis of the performance of various IBAs, including Gd2O3-UO2, Er2O3-UO2, and Dy2O3-UO2, as well as the standard (proposed by the designer) burnable absorber (BA) (CrB2Al) in the BNPP, and their impact on fuel neutronic characteristics has been performed. Five fuel assemblies: one without a BA fuel rod and four each containing standard BA gadolinia, erbia, and dysprosia fuel pins were investigated. The neutronic properties of BAs were evaluated by the infinite multiplication factor, reactivity swing, and power peaking factor dependence on fuel burnup. Gadolinia, with a concentration of 5%, has the greatest effect on initial reactivity with 10 893 pcm and the lowest effect on the reactivity swing with 0.277 Δk among the other BAs, which leads to selecting the most appropriate BA for improving reactor core stabilities and enhancing operational safety. The gadolinium IBA extends the cycle burnup by about 1 GWd/tonne U compared to the standard BA. At the beginning of the cycle, erbium has a more uniform power distribution than the standard BA; however, at the end of the cycle, gadolinia has a more uniform power distribution.