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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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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August 2024
Latest News
New laws offer nuclear industry incentives for existing power plant uprates
This year, the U.S. nuclear industry received a much-needed economic boost that could help preserve operating nuclear power plants and incentivize upgrades that extend their lifespan and power output.
Signed into law in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act offers production tax credits (PTCs) for existing nuclear power plants and either PTCs or investment tax credits (ITCs) for new carbon-free generation. These credits could make power uprates—increasing the maximum power level at which a commercial plant may operate—a much more appealing option for utilities.
Oleg Roderick, Mihai Anitescu, Paul Fischer
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 164 | Number 2 | February 2010 | Pages 122-139
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE08-79
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this work we describe a polynomial regression approach that uses derivative information for analyzing the performance of a complex system that is described by a mathematical model depending on several stochastic parameters.We construct a surrogate model as a goal-oriented projection onto an incomplete space of polynomials; find coordinates of the projection by regression; and use derivative information to significantly reduce the number of the sample points required to obtain a good model. The simplified model can be used as a control variate to significantly reduce the sample variance of the estimate of the goal.For our test model, we take a steady-state description of heat distribution in the core of the nuclear reactor core, and as our goal we take the maximum centerline temperature in a fuel pin. For this case, the resulting surrogate model is substantially more computationally efficient than random sampling or approaches that do not use derivative information, and it has greater precision than linear models.