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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.
Richard B. Vilim, Richard W. Brock
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 123 | Number 2 | June 1996 | Pages 259-271
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE96-A24187
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The trend toward increased reliance on passive features for power reactor safety makes it important to obtain the characteristics of the reactor system from measurements on the system. A method is described for solving for the delayed neutron parameters in a liquid-metal power reactor by fitting an analytic solution of the point-kinetics equations to the flux die-away from a dropped rod in an initially critical core. The method includes treatment of those conditions found in a power reactor that depart from those in a critical assembly experiment. These include a comparatively long rod drop time and a detector signal that instead of providing an integrated count rate is a sampled data signal proportional to the instantaneous fission power. The delayed neutron parameter values calculated from a rod drop experiment in the Experimental Breeder Reactor II are in agreement with values calculated using first principles and knowledge of core material composition and nuclear cross sections.