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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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
September 2024
Nuclear Technology
August 2024
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Taking shape: Fusion energy ecosystems built with public-private partnerships
It’s possible to describe fusion in simple terms: heat and squeeze small atoms to get abundant clean energy. But there’s nothing simple about getting fusion ready for the grid.
Private developers, national lab and university researchers, suppliers, and end users working toward that goal are developing a range of complex technologies to reach fusion temperatures and pressures, confounded by science and technology gaps linked to plasma behavior; materials, diagnostics, and electronics for extreme environments; fuel cycle sustainability; and economics.
Ho Jin Park, Hyung Jin Shim, Chang Hyo Kim
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 167 | Number 3 | March 2011 | Pages 196-208
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE09-106
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new formulation aimed at quantifying uncertainties of Monte Carlo (MC) tallies such as keff and the microscopic reaction rates as well as nuclide number density estimates in MC depletion analysis is presented. It is shown that when the two major MC inputs - the microscopic cross sections and nuclide number densities - are assumed to have uncertainties, the variance of a given MC tally used as a measure of its uncertainty in this formulation arises from four sources: the statistical uncertainty of the MC tally, uncertainties of microscopic cross sections and nuclide number densities, and the cross correlations between them and the latter three contributions can be determined by computing correlation coefficients between uncertain variables. It is also shown that the variance of any given nuclide number density at the end of each depletion time step (DTS) stems from uncertainties of the nuclide number densities and microscopic reaction rates of nuclides at the beginning of each DTS, and they are determined by computing correlation coefficients between these two uncertain variables. The new formulation is incorporated into the Monte Carlo Code for Advanced Reactor Design (McCARD) of Seoul National University, and a McCARD depletion analysis for a U-TRU-Zr fuel assembly is performed to examine quantitatively the uncertainty propagation behavior of MC tallies such as k and the number densities of actinides as a function of DTS. The results demonstrate that the formulation is useful not only for quantifying the uncertainty propagation analysis in MC depletion analysis but also for identifying the types of nuclear cross-section data that need to be improved to obtain a more reliable incineration physics analysis of the transuranium fuel.