Advanced Nuclear Energy Technology, Applications & Alaska – A Brief Primer
Advanced Nuclear Energy Technology, Applications & Alaska – A Brief Primer
11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
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Advanced Nuclear Energy Technology and Applications – A Brief Primer
Advanced Nuclear Energy Technology and Applications – A Brief Primer
11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
Review of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) Ancillary Thermodynamic Database (TDB) Volume (DRAFT REV. 0)
The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) Ancillary data volume comprises thermodynamic data of mineral and aqueous species that, in addition to Auxiliary Data (as referred to in previous NEA thermodynamic data volumes), is necessary to calculations of chemical interactions relevant to radioactive waste management and nuclear energy. This SAND report is a review of the NEA Ancillary data critical reviews volume of thermodynamic data parameters. The review given in this report mainly involves data comparison with other thermodynamic data assessments, analysis of thermodynamic parameters, and examination of data sources. Only new and updated data parameters were considered in this review. Overall, no major inconsistencies or errors were found as allowed by the comparisons conducted in this review. Some remarks were noted, for example, on the consideration of relevant studies and/or comparisons on the analysis and retrieval of thermodynamic data parameters not cited in the respective sections.
11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
Non-Electric Applications of Generation IV Reactors: Accelerating Economy-Wide Decarbonization via Nuclear Energy
This presentation covers the role of nuclear energy in support net-zero solutions, highlighting work within the US DOE Integrated Energy Systems, Light Water Reactor Sustainability, and Hydrogen at Scale programs. The discussion will also introduce the recently-establishing Generation-IV International Forum (GIF) interim task force on non-electric applications of nuclear heat (NEaNH-iTF). This work is presented within a special invited webinar organized by the GIF Education and Training Working Group and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
08 HYDROGEN↗
Advancing Nuclear Energy to Support Economy-wide Net-zero Solutions: Challenges and Opportunities
Governments and private industry around the world have established aggressive goals to achieve net-zero emissions for the power, industrial, and transportation sectors by 2050. These aggressive goals demand immediate action if we are to be successful, and they require us to think more holistically about our clean energy options. Programs within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are addressing these holistic solutions. Traditionally, electricity generation and management and meeting energy demands for industry and transportation are considered independently. As we seek to achieve net-zero, we need to reassess energy demands. When we consider overall energy use, only one-third is in the form of electricity. Additional energy demands are in the form of heat or steam for industrial processes, as well as transportation. These sectors are much harder to abate, and electrification may not be the best option. Reducing environmental emissions at an affordable cost, while maintaining grid reliability and resilience, will require us to use all of the clean energy resources that we have available. That means coordinating the use of nuclear, renewables, and fossil fuels with carbon capture to meet growing demands for electricity, industrial applications, and mobility. The DOE Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) program on Integrated Energy Systems (IES) is led by researchers at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and work is conducted in partnership with an array of other DOE laboratories, industry, and academia. The primary focus of IES research is to assess the technical and economic potential of IES to enhance the flexibility and utilization of nuclear reactors working alongside renewable generators to meet an array of energy demands—thereby maximizing the utilization of clean energy resources across all energy sectors. Various energy applications and product streams beyond electricity are being evaluated, ranging from generation of potable water to production of hydrogen, fertilizers, synthetic fuels, and chemicals. The DOE-NE program additionally partners with the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office under the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to jointly fund the development of analysis tools, technologies, and nuclear-integrated hydrogen demonstration projects. This presentation highlights the wide array of R&D being conducted across multiple DOE-funded programs to develop and deploy nuclear-based IES that will be key to achieving our net-zero goals. By working with key collaborators in the nuclear industry, analytical studies are now becoming a reality in demonstration projects. The presentation specifically focuses on motivations for the paradigm shift in how nuclear energy is deployed and used, opportunities for nuclear energy to support an array of non-electric application, integration options, computational tools and experimental systems to support evaluation and to accelerate deployment, and industry partnerships.
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
A Review of Nuclear Energy Generation in Stars, and Some Aspects of Nucleosynthesis
Nuclear energy generation in stars and some aspects of nucleosynthesis
NUCLEOSYNTHESIS↗
Nuclear Energy Model Intercomparison Project
This document summarizes the current status and future plans of the Nuclear Model Intercomparison Project. The objectives of this project are to understand how issues central to nuclear energy are modeled in long-term capacity expansion models, to investigate how model structures and input assumptions impact projections for nuclear’s role, to refine model representations of nuclear energy, and to communicate findings to the research community and decision-makers. High-level goals are discussed for each of the four participating model groups: the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). This document summarizes scenarios and assumptions for the model comparison, outcomes from the first workshop, and next steps.
11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
Achieving a Net-Zero Future: The Role of Nuclear Energy
Governments and private industry around the world have established aggressive goals to achieve net-zero emissions for the power, industrial, and transportation sectors by 2050. These aggressive goals demand immediate action if we are to be successful, and they require us to think more holistically about our clean energy options. Programs within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) are addressing these holistic solutions. Traditionally, electricity generation and management are considered independently from meeting energy demands for industry and transportation. As we seek to eliminate emissions across all energy use sectors we need to reassess how energy demands are met. When we consider overall energy use, only one-third is in the form of electricity. Additional energy demands are in the form of heat or steam for industrial processes, in addition to direct fuel use for transportation. These sectors are much harder to abate, and electrification may not be the best option. Reducing environmental emissions at an affordable cost, while maintaining grid reliability and resilience, will require us to leverage all of the clean energy resources available. The DOE Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) program on Integrated Energy Systems (IES) is led by researchers at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), and work is conducted in partnership with an array of other DOE laboratories, industry, and academia. The primary focus of IES research is to assess the technical and economic potential of nuclear-driven IES to enhance the flexibility and utilization of nuclear reactors working alongside renewable generators to meet an array of energy demands—thereby maximizing the utilization of clean energy resources across all energy sectors. Various energy applications and product streams beyond electricity are being evaluated, ranging from generation of potable water to production of hydrogen, fertilizers, synthetic fuels, and various chemicals. The DOE-NE program additionally partners with the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office under the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to jointly fund the development of analysis tools, technologies, and nuclear-integrated hydrogen demonstration projects. This presentation will highlight the wide array of R&D being conducted across multiple DOE-funded programs to develop and deploy nuclear-based IES that will be key to achieving our net-zero goals. By working with key collaborators in the nuclear industry, analytical studies are now becoming a reality in demonstration projects.
08 HYDROGEN↗
Resilient design in nuclear energy: Critical lessons from a cross-disciplinary analysis of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident
This paper presents a multidisciplinary analysis of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. Along with the latest observations and simulation studies, we synthesize the time-series and event progressions during the accident across multiple disciplines, including in-plant physics and engineering systems, operators’ actions, emergency responses, meteorology, radionuclide release and transport, land contamination, and health impacts. We identify three key factors that exacerbated the consequences of the accident: (1) the failure of Unit 2 containment venting, (2) the insufficient integration of radiation measurements and meteorology data in the evacuation strategy, and (3) the limited risk assessment and emergency preparedness. We conclude with new research and development directions to improve the resilience of nuclear energy systems and communities, including (1) meteorology-informed proactive venting, (2) machine learning-enabled adaptive evacuation zones, and (3) comprehensive risk-informed emergency planning while leveraging the experience from responses to other disasters.
63 RADIATION, THERMAL, AND OTHER ENVIRON. POLLUTAN↗
Factors Impacting Nuclear Energy Share in U.S. Energy Markets
The purpose of this report is to collate information and findings from recent studies conducted by national and international bodies/institutes to identify approaches for maintaining/enhancing the role of nuclear energy in the current and future energy mix of the United States. This report shows how nuclear generation grew quickly to provide 20% of U.S. electricity, sustaining that level for three decades without the benefit of new construction, but is now projected to decline going forward. Nuclear construction costs in the U.S. spiraled out of control, ending construction for two decades and the recent resumption of construction has continued the pattern of schedule delays and cost overruns. However, nuclear operations exhibited strong learning, achieving and sustaining the highest capacity factor of any electricity generation technology and license extensions and uprates have sustained nuclear market share. The share of nuclear energy in the U.S. electricity market is projected to decline by ~1/3rd over the next 30 years The report provides an overview of how the markets work in theory and in practice. It indicates how market deregulation and clean energy policies have created conditions where nuclear plants are being retired for economic rather than technical reasons. The report also shows how many of the markets do not in practice have free competition but instead have outcomes that are being determined more and more by policy instead of market forces. While electricity costs from existing nuclear plants are low, electricity from new builds is projected to be too expensive to be competitive head-to-head with natural gas, even for nth-of-a-kind costs. Wind and solar energy have enjoyed an extended period of sustained subsidy. This protected environment has resulted in a sustained reduction in plant level costs to the point that some of these Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) technologies are becoming competitive even if their direct subsidies are removed. But plant level costs underestimate total VRE costs which include a number of system-level externalities. The incremental system value of additional VRE capacity was shown to decline as market share increases, with solar value declining more quickly than wind. The report closes with examination of a possible future for nuclear generation as part of deep decarbonization of the electricity sector. This approach avoids direct competition with natural gas. The two options for achieving 100% decarbonization are to use only renewables or to use all zero emissions technologies, and the report shows the second approach is much less expensive than the first.
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
Nuclear Energy: Supply Chain Deep Dive Assessment
The report “America’s Strategy to Secure the Supply Chain for a Robust Clean Energy Transition” lays out the challenges and opportunities faced by the United States in the energy supply chain as well as the federal government plans to address these challenges and opportunities. It is accompanied by several issue-specific deep dive assessments, including this one, in response to Executive Order 14017 “America’s Supply Chains,” which directs the Secretary of Energy to submit a report on supply chains for the energy sector industrial base. The Executive Order is helping the federal government to build more secure and diverse U.S. supply chains, including energy supply chains. This report responds to Executive Order 14017 by describing the current and potential future roles for nuclear energy in the United States and abroad, the various segments of the nuclear energy supply chain, and the main risks facing the sector. Some issues, such as uranium imports, relate both to existing nuclear reactors and advanced reactors under development, while other issues, such as production of high-assay low-enriched uranium, relate primarily to plans for advanced reactors.
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
Toward a unified treatment of Δ S = 0 parity violation in low-energy nuclear processes
We revisit the unified treatment of low-energy hadronic parity violation espoused by Desplanques, Donoghue, and Holstein to the end of an ab initio treatment of parity violation in low-energy nuclear processes within the standard model. Here, we use our improved effective Hamiltonian and precise nonperturbative assessments of the quark charges of the nucleon within lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) to make new assessments of the parity-violating meson-nucleon coupling constants. Comparing with recent, precise measurements of hadronic parity violation in few-body nuclear reactions, we find improved agreement with these experimental results, though some tensions remain. We thus note the broader problem of comparing low-energy constants from nuclear and few-nucleon systems, considering, too, unresolved theoretical issues in connecting an ab initio, effective Hamiltonian approach to chiral effective theories. We note how future experiments and lattice QCD studies could sharpen the emerging picture, promoting the study of hadronic parity violation as a laboratory for testing “end-to-end” theoretical descriptions of weak processes in hadrons and nuclei at low energies.
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
Simulation results for a low energy nuclear recoil yields measurement in liquid xenon using the MiX detector
Measuring the scintillation and ionization yields of liquid xenon in response to ultra-low energy nuclear recoil events is necessary to increase the sensitivity of liquid xenon experiments to light dark matter. Neutron capture on xenon can be used to produce nuclear recoil events with energies below 0.3 keV NR via the asymmetric emission of γ rays during nuclear de-excitation. The feasibility of an ultra-low energy nuclear recoil measurement using neutron capture was investigated for the Michigan Xenon (MiX) detector, a small dual-phase xenon time projection chamber that is optimized for a high scintillation gain. Simulations of the MiX detector, a partial neutron moderator, and a pulsed neutron generator indicate that a population of neutron capture events can be isolated from neutron scattering events. Additionally, the rate of neutron captures in the MiX detector was optimized by varying the thickness of the partial neutron moderator, neutron pulse width, and neutron pulse frequency.
detector calibration↗
Deep quantum circuit simulations of low-energy nuclear states
Numerical simulation is an important method for verifying the quantum circuits used to simulate low-energy nuclear states. However, real-world applications of quantum computing for nuclear theory often generate deep quantum circuits that place demanding memory and processing requirements on conventional simulation methods. Here, we present advances in high-performance numerical simulations of deep quantum circuits to efficiently verify the accuracy of low-energy nuclear physics applications. Our approach employs novel methods for accelerating the numerical simulation including management of simulated mid-circuit measurements to verify projection based state preparation circuits. In this study, we test these methods across a variety of high-performance computing systems and our results show that circuits up to 21 qubits and more than 115,000,000 gates can be efficiently simulated.
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
Optimized nuclear energy density functionals including long-range pion contributions
Nuclear energy density functionals successfully reproduce properties of nuclei across almost the entire nuclear chart. However, nearly all available functionals are phenomenological in nature and lack a rigorous connection to systematically improvable nuclear forces. This issue might be solved with an energy density functional obtained from first principles. As an intermediate step towards this goal we construct the GUDE family of functionals that is obtained from a hybrid scheme consisting of long-range pion-exchange contributions derived from chiral effective field theory at the Hartree-Fock level and a phenomenological Skyrme part. When including pion contributions beyond next-to-leading order in the chiral expansion, we find significant improvements over a reference Skyrme functional constructed following the same protocol. We analyze the importance of different pion contributions and identify which terms drive the observed improvements. Since pions are incorporated without adding further optimization parameters to the functionals, the improvements can be attributed to the functional form of these terms. Our work therefore suggests that the considered chiral contributions constitute useful ingredients for true energy density functionals. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
Outlook on Industrial Requirements for Incorporating Nuclear Energy into Industrial Processes
There is an increasing interest globally and in the U.S. in decarbonizing heavy industrial processes which have large demands for heat and power. Currently these industries primarily use fossil fuels to meet these demands and they include: oil & gas, petroleum refining, chemicals and derivative products manufacturing, iron & steel production, polymers, ammonia and fertilizers, etc. The U.S. DOE Integrated Energy Systems (IES) program seeks to identify and analyze opportunities for integrating and substituting nuclear energy to fulfil these large heat and power demands in a cost competitive and sustainable manner while reducing carbon emissions of the processes by using clean nuclear power. Presently various representatives from a subset of these industrial companies have expressed interest in evaluating the options of integrating future advanced nuclear small modular reactors with their industries. This study is a scoping study to provide an outlook of industrial energy demands and the potential nuclear energy substitution potential. Future work will analyze in a more detailed manner the potential designs for coupling advanced nuclear reactors with various industries. The industrial processes of oil refining, methanol production, pulp and paper, ammonia and chlorine-alkali are described focusing on how heat and power is used within the facilities in the context of identifying nuclear substitution opportunities. The aim is to provide reliable, competitive, and sustainable energy that is clean while reducing carbon emissions and other environmental impacts such as water withdrawals, consumption, and contamination.
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
TRANSPORTATION CONSIDERATIONS FOR USED FUEL AND ADVANCED NUCLEAR ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES
This study focuses on requirements and challenges pertaining to advanced transportable nuclear energy systems, which are currently in development and feature varying degrees of mobility. These reactors mostly use high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel, and only limited refueling is required during their lifecycles. Due to the smaller source terms, higher burnup fuel, and potentially higher thermal efficiency involved, the waste inventory will be less than that generated by conventional light-water reactors. However, the relevant regulatory requirements must be met when transporting HALEU fuel (whether fresh or used) inside the reactor vessel—mainly the fuel material transportation, siting, and physical protection requirements outlined in US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations 10 CFR 71 and 73. Spent nuclear fuel (SNF), as well as irradiated fuel (used during any interval of reactor operation), contains highly radioactive materials that generate heat and necessitate special precautions during transportation. This study addresses the challenges that this incurs, and outlines potential solutions.
11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
Achieving American Leadership in the Nuclear Energy Supply Chain Factsheet
The United States is committed to achieving a 50 to 52 percent reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030, creating a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035, and achieving net zero emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050. Nuclear energy is essential to meeting those goals. That includes the existing fleet and advanced reactors that are moving forward for deployment and under development. Nuclear power plants produce 20 percent of the total electricity supply in the United States today and are the largest source of carbon-free energy. However, we have an opportunity to expand significantly nuclear energy’s percentage of electricity generated in the United States. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) report - developed in response to President Biden’s Executive Order “America’s Supply Chains” signed in 2021 - describes the nuclear supply chain and investigates challenges for continued operation of today’s 93 reactors and construction of advanced reactors. The supply chain is critical for successfully enabling the continued operation of the existing domestic fleet of light-water reactors as well as supporting deployment of advanced nuclear technologies.
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