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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.
Karl O. Ott
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 99 | Number 1 | May 1988 | Pages 13-27
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE88-A23541
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The longer term response of oxide- and metal-fueled liquid-metal-cooled reactors to unscrammed loss-of-flow and loss-of-heat-sink failures is investigated. The investigation consists of a review of numerical transient calculations performed by the Argonne National Laboratory Reactor Analysis and Safety Division, and of analytical analyses of semiasymptotic states. The emphasis is on the identification and evaluation of an inherent shutdown state for metal fuel, with its high heat conductivity, as an alternative to the familiar low-power asymptotic critical state. Design implications for retaining the inherently effected shutdown for a sufficiently long period are discussed and quantitatively evaluated. In addition, the effect of uncertainties of reactivity coefficients on predictions for such unscrammed transients is investigated. It is shown how measurements during a preoperational safety demonstration phase can validate and possibly correct those predictions.