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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
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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August 2024
Latest News
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.
Alex Aimetta, Nicolò Abrate, Sandra Dulla, Antonio Froio
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 78 | Number 4 | May 2022 | Pages 275-290
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2021.2003151
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Neutronic modeling of fusion machines requires a detailed representation of their complex geometry in order to properly evaluate various parameters of interest such as energy deposition and tritium production in the breeding blanket. In this work, the neutronics of the Affordable, Robust, Compact (ARC) fusion reactor is modeled with the Monte Carlo particle transport code Serpent developed at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland as an alternative to other, more established, tools in the fusion community such as the Monte Carlo N-Particle Transport (MCNP) code. The tritium breeding ratio (TBR) and the power deposited by neutrons and photons inside the breeding blanket of ARC are evaluated. Considerations related to activation of materials and to neutron shielding are not taken into account. As a first step, estimations have been obtained adopting a spatially uniform neutron source inside the plasma chamber. A second set of calculations has been performed considering a nonuniform source that takes into account a more realistic neutron generation distribution, with higher values at the center of the plasma and reduced rates toward the plasma edge. The results obtained with Serpent have been compared with available literature values for the TBR and the power deposition, confirming that Serpent can be considered a suitable alternative code for the neutronic analysis of fusion reactors like ARC. The TBR presented in this paper (1.0853) is in good agreement with the value found in the literature, with a relative difference of 0.49%. The total power deposition has a maximum relative difference of 12% for the components of interest in the present work.