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Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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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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Nuclear new build procurement considerations
It may seem counterintuitive, but the best time to enhance the ability to support operations and maintenance for a new plant is before construction starts. This is one of many lessons learned by the currently operating nuclear fleet. As construction and startup of many nuclear facilities was completed, it quickly became evident that the ability to efficiently support operations and maintenance was limited. Most of the information necessary to establish and manage procurement of spare and replacement items, maintenance, and configuration of the facilities was unavailable and had to be gathered on a case-by-case, “on-demand” basis. Absence of necessary information and the associated challenges resulted in the need for staff augmentation and multiyear-long projects to develop equipment bills of material and maintenance programs and to perform technical evaluations for the huge quantities of spare and replacement items being requested.
Rajeev Ranjan, R. K. Singh, S. K. Sikka, Anil Kakodkar
Nuclear Technology | Volume 153 | Number 3 | March 2006 | Pages 341-359
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3712
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper highlights a three-dimensional (3-D) transient numerical simulation of the Baneberry event of December 18, 1970, with a 10-kT yield and a 278-m source depth, conducted at the Nevada Test Site. This site has complex geological features with preexisting faults and layered geological strata characterized by a hard Paleozoic layer below the source, and saturated tuff on the west side of the source and clay-rich tuff toward the east side, both overlaid by top alluvial layers. In addition, a layer of 50% montmorillonite is sandwiched between two layers of 20% montmorillonite on the east end. This event is reported to have vented because of fault rupture and shock-wave reflections from a closer hard Paleozoic layer near the source. Here, the shock-induced slip along the preexisting fault plane has an important bearing on the containment efficiency of this event. None of the earlier reported simulation studies address the above slip phenomenon and the influence of variation in geological strata in the presence of the preexisting fault in a 3-D framework for underground nuclear events. The paper describes the capabilities of the SHOCK-3D finite element code for simulating short-time shock-wave propagation, fault rupture leading to sliding along the fault plane, and subsequent crater formation at ground zero with a long-duration transient computation to study the quasi-static behavior of the Baneberry event. Precise modeling schemes of the composite geological strata and fault system demonstrate that a dip-slip mechanism had developed for this event, leading to final venting. The present numerical computation results with SHOCK-3D are in excellent agreement with site observations. In addition, the limitations of earlier reported simulation results from the TENSOR two-dimensional axisymmetric code presented by Terhune et al. have also been overcome.