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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
J. A. Bonnet, Jr., R. K. Osborn
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 45 | Number 3 | September 1971 | Pages 314-320
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE71-A19083
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method is proposed to determine the initiation of bulk boiling in a sodium-cooled fast reactor. The technique could also be used to study two-phase single-component fluid behavior. The method consists of introducing a standing acoustic wave in a coolant channel of the core. This changes the coolant density, fission rate, and gamma-ray production by fission. The gamma rays leaking out of that region of the core are monitored with and without the acoustic waves. It is shown that this ratio is strongly coupled to the acoustic velocity, and this depends sensitively on the average void fraction in the channel. A drastic reduction in the acoustic velocity (by a factor of the order of one hundredth for sodium at 1830 °F) with the formation of the first sodium voids makes this ratio very sensitive to the initiation of bulk boiling.
