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Division Spotlight
Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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.
Argala Srivastava, Deep Bhandari, K. P. Singh, Umasankari Kannan
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 4 | April 2023 | Pages 703-710
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2131343
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this technical note, an analysis of an integral experiment of the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) Critical Facility (CF) with a diffusion-based Monte Carlo (MC) method is discussed. In this method, the diffusion kernel is converted into probabilities per unit time for tracking the particle in the problem domain. The diffusion-based MC method is coupled with a time-dependent MC algorithm developed earlier and has been used for space-time simulations in neutron multiplication assemblies. Kinetics simulations are best solved using a transport MC route, but this requires long computational time. The diffusion-based MC method provides a faster solution in such space-time simulations. Most of the space-time kinetics studies and benchmarks are based on diffusion theory, and there are very few transport theory or MC benchmarks. Thus, the diffusion-based MC facilitates exact comparison with the large number of diffusion theory benchmarks. The efficacy of this method was tested earlier by comparison with the results of realistic space-time kinetics benchmarks based on diffusion theory methods involving multiregion reactors and detailed energy dependence. Comparison of our results with these benchmarks has shown satisfactory agreement.
As a step toward more detailed benchmarking, the ability and accuracy of this method are tested on the recent experiment done in the AHWR CF. The integral experiments with one thoria-based mixed oxide experimental fuel assembly in the core of the AHWR CF were analyzed with this method and were compared with the observed experimental values. The experiments consisted of measurement of the critical height and worth of shut-off rods (SORs) with the experimental fuel assembly placed at different lattice locations. Neutron count rates as a function of time after reactor trip for estimation of the worth of the SORs were also simulated, and the results are found to be in good agreement with the observed values.