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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
Meeting Spotlight
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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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Latest News
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.”
K. N. Schwinkendorf
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 132 | Number 1 | May 1999 | Pages 118-126
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE99-A2053
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Severe accident simulation has been performed in the past to predict the energy release arising from hypothetical core disruptive accidents (CDA) postulated to occur in liquid-metal reactors (LMRs). This field has developed to a mature state with the creation of computer codes such as SIMMER, but these codes are highly specific to LMR designs. More recent attention has focused on thermal-spectrum criticality accidents. This has resulted in the creation of a new simulator code, A Transient History for Energetic Nuclear Accidents_2D (ATHENA_2D), which solves the transient multigroup space-time kinetics equations, coupled to multichannel thermal hydraulics and computational fluid dynamics. This paper presents results from two-dimensional kinetics simulations performed for a water reflood recriticality accident in a damaged light water reactor, typical of a Three Mile Island end-state core geometry. The accident is initiated by assuming reflood water that is insufficiently borated and a reactivity-optimized debris bed. Reactivity insertion rates analyzed in this study generally are smaller than in LMR CDAs (tens of dollars per second versus up to hundreds of dollars per second), and the energetics are slightly lower. Parametric variation of input was performed, including reactivity insertion rate and initial temperature.