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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
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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
NRC engineers share their expertise at the University of Puerto Rico
Robert Roche-Rivera and Marcos Rolón-Acevedo are licensed professional engineers who work at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They are also alumni of the University of Puerto Rico–Mayagüez (UPRM) and have been sharing their knowledge and experience with students at their alma mater since last year, serving as adjunct professors in the university’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. During the 2023–2024 school year, they each taught two courses: Fundamentals of Nuclear Science and Engineering, and Nuclear Power Plant Engineering.
Rei Kimura, Yuki Nakai, Satoshi Wada
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 195 | Number 12 | December 2021 | Pages 1279-1290
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2021.1908081
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A novel ex-core-detector–based core power reconstruction method is presented. The method uses power correlations between fuel regions and can be applied to a real-time small reactor core monitoring system especially for the detection of abnormal behavior. The use of ex-core detectors reduces the installation and maintenance costs of small modular reactors (SMRs) compared to conventional in-core detectors. To construct the power distribution with ex-core-detector count rates, it is necessary to account for the scattering and absorption reactions of neutrons within the core that make it difficult to extract information directly from the central core region. In the proposed method, detector responses and power correlations are preevaluated and revised by mathematical transformation. Monte Carlo simulations using the realistic SMR core design MoveluXTM demonstrated that the present method is capable of reconstructing the core power distributions within an average error of 10% using the count rates of the ex-core detectors. Also, the reconstruction successfully identified the position of abnormal power peaks in the central core region and an unbalanced power distribution.