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Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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A series of firsts delivers new Plant Vogtle units
Southern Nuclear was first when no one wanted to be.
The nuclear subsidiary of the century-old utility Southern Company, based in Atlanta, Ga., joined a pack of nuclear companies in the early 2000s—during what was then dubbed a “nuclear renaissance”—bullish on plans for new large nuclear facilities and adding thousands of new carbon-free megawatts to the grid.
In 2008, Southern Nuclear applied for a combined construction and operating license (COL), positioning the company to receive the first such license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2012. Also in 2008, Southern became the first U.S. company to sign an engineering, procurement, and construction contract for a Generation III+ reactor. Southern chose Westinghouse’s AP1000 pressurized water reactor, which was certified by the NRC in December 2011.
Fast forward a dozen years—which saw dozens of setbacks and hundreds of successes—and Southern Nuclear and its stakeholders celebrated the completion of Vogtle Units 3 and 4: the first new commercial nuclear power construction project completed in the U.S. in more than 30 years.
R. E. Behmer, B. L. Hoffman
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 2 | Number 1 | February 1957 | Pages 14-23
doi.org/10.13182/NSE57-A15568
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An analytical procedure is presented for evaluating and correlating various heat transfer and economic parameters in order to optimize core size and configuration in the design of heterogeneous reactors. Maximum wall temperature calculations are used to determine a large range of reactor operating conditions with core size and shape as parameters. Information gained from crossplotting such information may then be used to estimate the sensitivity of the cost of the reactor system to some operating variable such as coolant flow rate, again with core size as a parameter. This information, coupled with fuel cost data as determined from nuclear calculations, can then be used to select an optimum core size and optimum operating conditions for a given system.