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Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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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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New laws offer nuclear industry incentives for existing power plant uprates
This year, the U.S. nuclear industry received a much-needed economic boost that could help preserve operating nuclear power plants and incentivize upgrades that extend their lifespan and power output.
Signed into law in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act offers production tax credits (PTCs) for existing nuclear power plants and either PTCs or investment tax credits (ITCs) for new carbon-free generation. These credits could make power uprates—increasing the maximum power level at which a commercial plant may operate—a much more appealing option for utilities.
J. R. Torczynski, D.R. Neal
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 113 | Number 3 | March 1993 | Pages 189-206
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE93-A24488
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In many types of nuclear-reactor-pumped lasers, the fission fragments that are used to excite gaseous lasing species heat the gas in a spatially nonuniform manner. This heating nonuniformity induces transient gas motion, which results in density and refractive-index gradients that affect the laser’s optical behavior. A computational model of the transient gas motion is developed using the acoustic filtering methodology, which neglects the spatial variation of the pressure. This model incorporates the effect of spatially varying gas density onfission-fragment heating. Gas motion out of the laser cell into small, rapidly cooled regions is treated as a volumetric mass loss distributed over the laser cell. Although these regions have a relatively small fraction of the total volume, a large amount of gas can flow into them during the heating because of the rapid cooling therein. This gas removal from the cell during pumping, neglected in previous analyses, is important because fission-fragment heating is strongly dependent on local gas density. To quantify the laser’s optical behavior, experiments are performed in which a probe laser beam is passed through the laser cell This probe beam acquires a wavefront distortion from the refractive-index gradients and is imaged onto a wavefront slope sensor, which yields temporally and spatially resolved measurements of the angular deflection (wavefront slope) of the probe laser beam. Experimental and computed results for this quantity exhibit reasonable agreement over a wide range of pressures and heating amplitudes.