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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Jan Wallenius, Kamil Tucek, Johan Carlsson, Waclaw Gudowski
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 137 | Number 1 | January 2001 | Pages 96-106
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE01-A2178
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The application of burnable absorbers (BAs) to minimize power peaking, reactivity loss, and capture-to-fission probabilities in an accelerator-driven waste transmutation system has been investigated. Boron-10-enriched B4C absorber rods were introduced into a lead-bismuth-cooled core fueled with transuranic (TRU) discharges from light water reactors to achieve the smallest possible power peakings at beginning-of-life (BOL) subcriticality level of 0.97. Detailed Monte Carlo simulations show that a radial power peaking equal to 1.2 at BOL is attainable using a four-zone differentiation in BA content. Using a newly written Monte Carlo burnup code, reactivity losses were calculated to be 640 pcm per percent TRU burnup for unrecycled TRU discharges. Comparing to corresponding values in BA-free cores, BA introduction diminishes reactivity losses in TRU-fueled subcritical cores by ~20%. Radial power peaking after 300 days of operation at 1200-MW thermal power was <1.75 at a subcriticality level of ~0.92, which appears to be acceptable, with respect to limitations in cladding and fuel temperatures. In addition, the use of BAs yields significantly higher fission-to-capture probabilities in even-neutron-number nuclides. Fission-to-absorption probability ratio for 241Am equal to 0.33 was achieved in the configuration studied. Hence, production of the strong alpha-emitter 242Cm is reduced, leading to smaller fuel-swelling rates and pin pressurization. Disadvantages following BA introduction, such as increase of void worth and decrease of Doppler feedback in conjunction with small values of eff, need to be addressed by detailed studies of subcritical core dynamics.
