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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.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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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Latest News
NRC approves subsequent license renewal for Oconee
All three units at the Duke Energy’s Oconee nuclear power plant in South Carolina are now licensed to operate for an additional 20 years.
Jeremy W. King, Craig M. Marianno, Sunil S. Chirayath
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 12 | December 2023 | Pages 3125-3137
Regular Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2191579
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Pending the availability of an operational long-term spent nuclear fuel (SNF) repository or other disposal methods, SNF will be increasingly stored in interim dry casks. Casks loaded with commercial SNF may contain several significant quantities of plutonium, so appropriate nuclear material safeguards monitoring is in order. An external remote monitoring system (RMS) developed by researchers at Texas A&M University is proposed to further the current dry cask safeguards regime, which is limited to containment and surveillance mechanisms. In this study, neutron measurements of SNF in dry cask storage were performed with the external RMS at a commercial interim spent fuel storage installation. Corresponding neutron transport simulations using MCNP were conducted with two types of detector responses (tallies) and the results were compared with measurements.
The objectives of the study were to add dry cask measurement data to the literature, to assess the performance of the external RMS in full-scale dry cask measurements, and to investigate the degree to which measurements could be estimated with high-fidelity radiation transport simulations. The study demonstrated that the external RMS can acquire neutron count rate measurements with a relative error of less than 0.5% in 5 min or less through the shielding of a dry cask lid. Additionally, the developed simulation model matched trends in the measurement data to a degree that exceeds results in current literature, and normalization factors were calculated to better estimate the magnitude of neutron count rates.