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The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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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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Senate committee hears from energy secretary nominee Chris Wright
Wright
Chris Wright, president-elect Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Department of Energy, spent hours today fielding questions from members of the U.S. Senate’s committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
During the hearing, Wright—who’s spent most of his career in fossil fuels—made comments in support of nuclear energy and efforts to expand domestic generation in the near future. Asked what actions he would take as energy secretary to improve the development and deployment of SMRs, Wright said: “It’s a big challenge, and I’m new to government, so I can’t list off the five levers I can pull. But (I’ve been in discussions) about how to make it easier to research, to invest, to build things. The DOE has land at some of its facilities that can be helpful in this regard.”
Masayuki Nakagawa, Hideaki Inoue
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 83 | Number 2 | February 1983 | Pages 214-228
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE83-A18215
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The double heterogeneity effect due to the fuel pin and the subassembly is estimated for neutronics parameters of a prototype fast power reactor. Both of the heterogeneity effects caused by the flux fine structure and the resonance shielding are taken into account. The model of the hexagonal unit subassembly consists of the smeared fuel, the wrapper tube, and the outer sodium regions, where the average cross sections of the smeared fuel region are obtained by a unit pin cell calculation in cylindrical geometry. It is shown that the equivalent smeared model agrees well with the refined cluster model. A formula to define the background cross section of the fuel isotopes is derived based on the rational approximation, and its accuracy is examined. This formula can take into account the contribution from the wrapper tube to the background cross sections of each ring of fuel pin array. The heterogeneity effect of the whole reactor model is calculated based on two-dimensional diffusion theory and perturbation theory. The double heterogeneity effect is found to be 0.5%Δk for keff, the positive sodium-void worth is reduced by 26%, and the negative Doppler reactivity increases by 7% for a prototype fast breeder reactor. These results are considerably larger than the estimates made by earlier workers. These effects are significant from the viewpoint of target accuracy goals in fast power reactor design.