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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Uncertainty contributes to lowest uranium spot prices in 18 months
A combination of plentiful supply and uncertain demand resulted in spot pricing for uranium closing out March below $64 per pound, with dips down to about $63.50 during mid-March—the lowest futures prices in 18 months, according to tracking by analysis firm Trading Economics. Spot prices have also fallen steadily since the beginning of 2024. Meanwhile, long-term prices have held steady at about $80 per pound at the end of March, according to Canadian front-end uranium mining, milling, and conversion company Cameco.
Iulian Nita, Rodica Pancef, Luminita Nitulescu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 3 | May 2024 | Pages 291-302
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2179312
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Fukushima accident led to concerns about enhancement of safety for the new design nuclear plants and also for the existing fleet of nuclear power plants (NPPs) by introducing passive safety systems. An important objective is to increase the grace time for a plant operator to establish an alternate heat sink in the case of a station blackout (SBO) accident. Efforts made by RATEN (https://www.raten.ro/?lang=en) in the frame of H2020 PIACE projects were to implement a passive safety system in the CANadian Deuterium Uranium 6 (CANDU 6) project. In this project, RATEN was in charge of the engineering design and computational modeling aspects, required to integrate a passive safety system in the existing CANDU 6 project. In order to design a passive safety system, a 3-day SBO accident was credited to occur at the Cernavoda Unit 2 NPP, a CANDU 6–type reactor. An isolation condenser (IC) system capable of transporting the total energy produced in the reactor core due to decay heat was designed and modeled. The engineering design solutions were made by RATEN CITON (http://www.citon.ro/english_index.html), and the thermal-hydraulic analysis was performed by RATEN ICN (https://nuclear.ro/en/) using the RELAP5 computer code (https://relap53d.inl.gov/SitePages/Home.aspx) to confirm natural circulation both in the secondary and the primary circuits during the SBO accident and heat transfer capability of the IC with and without noncondensable gases. The passive safety system design consists of four (4 × 33%) closed loop independent circuits, one for each steam generator. Each loop has an IC design to transport 0.66% of nominal thermal power of the reactor. In order to avoid a rapid transient during reactor cooldown, the system is endowed with four noncondensable gas tanks (one for each IC), connected to the outlet header of each IC, provided for reducing the IC heat flux simultaneously with reactor core residual heat decrease. The design concept was adapted to the CANDU 6 reactor power and the specific layout of the Cernavoda site, starting from the Advanced Lead-cooled Fast Reactor European Demonstrator (ALFRED) patent (the demonstrator of lead fast reactor technology) passive system, to increase the plant operator grace time from 23 h (current situation) to more than 72 h.
