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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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
Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
Rofida H. Khlifa, Nicolay N. Nikitenkov, Viktor N. Kudiiarov
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 4 | April 2024 | Pages 825-831
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2224464
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Chromium carbide (CrC) coatings were proposed as an accident-tolerant fuel complementary concept to provide enhanced protection for the inner side of nuclear fuel claddings, with preliminary results showing promising performance. To evaluate the neutronics performance of CrC coatings, a reactor physics–based analysis was performed. A single VVER-1200 fuel assembly was used as a model, and the Monte Carlo code MCNPX was used to perform the calculations. Results were compared to previous work on metallic chromium performance as inner-side coating material. Results showed that CrC coatings generally have less negative impacts on neutronics performance compared to chromium coatings. Neutron flux spectra showed slight reductions in the thermal energy region that reached up to −0.6% in a 40-µm CrC internally coated fuel assembly at an energy of 0.025 eV. The analysis of CrC internally coated fuel assembly nuclide inventories showed a relative increase in the isotopic concentration of some nuclides such as 239Pu and 241Pu, which was less than 1% for the cases considered. Comparing the calculated negative neutronics impacts, such as thermal neutron flux and fuel assembly operating time reductions, caused by CrC and Cr coating materials, the study revealed that the difference between these induced negative neutronics impacts is proportional to coating thickness. Therefore, CrC coatings will be most effective in terms of mitigating negative neutronics impacts when the specified coating thickness is large.
