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Division Spotlight
Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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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September 2024
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August 2024
Latest News
Nuclear new build procurement considerations
It may seem counterintuitive, but the best time to enhance the ability to support operations and maintenance for a new plant is before construction starts. This is one of many lessons learned by the currently operating nuclear fleet. As construction and startup of many nuclear facilities was completed, it quickly became evident that the ability to efficiently support operations and maintenance was limited. Most of the information necessary to establish and manage procurement of spare and replacement items, maintenance, and configuration of the facilities was unavailable and had to be gathered on a case-by-case, “on-demand” basis. Absence of necessary information and the associated challenges resulted in the need for staff augmentation and multiyear-long projects to develop equipment bills of material and maintenance programs and to perform technical evaluations for the huge quantities of spare and replacement items being requested.
Hoang Hai Nguyen, Jun Nishiyama, Toru Obara
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 12 | December 2020 | Pages 1128-1142
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2020.1775433
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The CANDLE (Constant Axial shape of Neutron flux, nuclide densities and power shape During Life of Energy production) reactor concept was proposed to overcome the disadvantages of current reactor technologies. In this study, a Monte Carlo–based procedure is developed for quantitative comparison of burnup performance and neutronic characteristics between lead bismuth eutectic (LBE)–cooled and sodium-cooled CANDLE reactors to demonstrate the possibility of using sodium coolant in a small CANDLE burning reactor. In this procedure, a neutron transport equation is solved using the MVP code with the JENDL-4.0 library, and the burnup calculation is solved using the MVP-BURN code with the detailed burnup chain. To simulate the fuel-shuffling process, an auxiliary code was developed using Python. The results show that for the same fuel pin design and core volume, changing the coolant from LBE to sodium reduced the keff by 2.3% and the average discharge burnup by 15.6%, due to the softer neutron spectrum and larger neutron leakage fraction. It would be necessary to increase the fuel volume and core radius approximately 38% and 17%, respectively, for criticality in a sodium-cooled CANDLE core.