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Division Spotlight
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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
Is waste really waste?
Tim Tinsley
I’ve been reflecting on the recent American Nuclear Society Winter Conference and Expo, where I enjoyed the discussion on recycling used nuclear fuel to recover valuable minerals or products for future applications. I have spent more than 30 years focusing on dissolving and separating nuclear material, so it was refreshing to hear the case for new applications being made. However, I feel that these discussions could go further still.
Radiation is energy, something that our society seems to have an endless need for. A nuclear power station produces a lot of radiation that is mostly discarded. But once fuel has been used, it still produces significant levels of radiation and heat energy. The associated storage, processing, and eventual disposal of this used fuel requires careful management and investment to protect systems and people from the radiation. Should we really disregard—and discard—this energy source, along with all the valuable minerals in the used fuel, when we could instead use it to deliver significant value to society?
Zhengzheng Hu, Ralph C. Smith, Jeffrey Willert, C. T. Kelley
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 177 | Number 3 | July 2014 | Pages 350-360
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-52
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Boltzmann transport equation is used to model the neutron flux in a nuclear reactor. The solution of the transport equation is the neutron flux, which depends on a large number of material cross sections that can be on the order of thousands. These cross sections describe various types of possible interactions between neutrons, such as fission, capture, and scattering. The cross sections are measured experimentally and therefore have associated uncertainties. It is thus necessary to quantify how the uncertainty of the cross-section values is propagated through the model for the neutron flux. High-dimensional model representations (HDMRs) can be employed to systematically quantify input-output relations. It can, however, be computationally prohibitive to construct a surrogate model using the HDMR framework for a model that has thousands of parameters. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm that utilizes the New Morris Method to first reduce the parameter space to include only the significant individual and pairwise effects and then construct a surrogate model using a Cut-HDMR expansion within the reduced space. A unified index is introduced to facilitate the comparison of the significance of the model parameters. The accuracy and efficiency of the surrogate model is demonstrated using a one-dimensional neutron transport equation.