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Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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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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Don’t get boxed in: Entergy CNO Kimberly Cook-Nelson shares her journey
Kimberly Cook-Nelson
For Kimberly Cook-Nelson, the path to the nuclear industry started with a couple of refrigerator boxes and cellophane paper. Her sixth-grade science project was inspired by her father, who worked at Seabrook power station in New Hampshire as a nuclear operator.
“I had two big refrigerator boxes I taped together. I cut the ‘primary operating system’ and the ‘secondary system’ out of them. Then I used different colored cellophane paper to show the pressurized water system versus the steam versus the cold cooling water,” Cook-Nelson said. “My dad got me those little replica pellets that I could pass out to people as they were going by at my science fair.”
John D. Metzger, Mohamed S. El-Genk,Alexander G. Parlos
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 109 | Number 2 | October 1991 | Pages 171-187
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE91-A28516
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To ensure that a space nuclear power system will operate safely and respond in a predictable and desired manner, the system’s controller design must account for changes in the system parameters over its lifetime. A model reference adaptive controller is applied to enable the actual space nuclear power system to follow a predictable and desired response of a reference model system, despite changes in the actual system’s operating parameters. Model reference adaptive control is well developed for linear systems and has been applied to simple, single-input, single-output (and the output’s derivative) systems. Model reference adaptive control is applied to a single-input, multiple-output nonlinear system but also shows the development for a multiple-input, multiple-output linear system. An algorithm is developed for linear systems to determine the constant gains in the model reference adaptive control algorithm and a method is developed that allows selective weighting of a desired state variable. Examples are presented to show that a model reference adaptive controller can ensure the load-following response of a nonlinear space nuclear power system and that the reference model can be complex enough to embody the physics of the plant. The results of the example cases show that a model reference adaptive controller can cause a selected nonlinear plant state variable to track the transient trajectory of the corresponding state variable of the reference model with local stability.