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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.
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2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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Don’t get boxed in: Entergy CNO Kimberly Cook-Nelson shares her journey
Kimberly Cook-Nelson
For Kimberly Cook-Nelson, the path to the nuclear industry started with a couple of refrigerator boxes and cellophane paper. Her sixth-grade science project was inspired by her father, who worked at Seabrook power station in New Hampshire as a nuclear operator.
“I had two big refrigerator boxes I taped together. I cut the ‘primary operating system’ and the ‘secondary system’ out of them. Then I used different colored cellophane paper to show the pressurized water system versus the steam versus the cold cooling water,” Cook-Nelson said. “My dad got me those little replica pellets that I could pass out to people as they were going by at my science fair.”
V. Subramanian, P. Sahoo, N. Malathi, R. Ananthanarayanan, R. Baskaran, B. Saha
Nuclear Technology | Volume 165 | Number 3 | March 2009 | Pages 257-269
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A4100
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the context of safety analysis of fast reactors, information on chemical speciation of sodium aerosol formed due to sodium fire is important. Clough and Garland studied theoretically the formation of NaOH and Na2CO3. Hofmann et al. and Cherdron and Jordan reported their experimental results on chemical speciation of sodium aerosols after certain periods of exposure to atmosphere based on wet chemical analysis. It is difficult to obtain quantitative information on chemical species present in dilute solutions by conventional chemical analysis. Appropriate chemical instrumentation is needed for this purpose, the development of which, along with the methodology adopted for chemical speciation, is discussed in this paper. The present technique provides rapid information on the composition of species as a function of time following a sodium fire. Experiments were conducted in the Aerosol Test Facility (ATF) in which sodium aerosols were generated, collected on filter papers, dissolved in water, and subjected to chemical characterization using a laboratory-developed high-resolution conductometric titration facility. The titration plots revealed the presence of NaOH and Na2CO3 as the two major components in the dissolved aqueous solutions. The concentrations of these species were derived with due consideration of the hydrolysis of Na2CO3 in water. It was possible to relate these concentrations to the compositions of the samples on the filter paper residues through a separate series of measurements on the dissolved solutions of the synthetic mixtures of NaOH and Na2CO3 of known compositions in the solid phase. It has been confirmed by our experimental results that for the initial mass concentration of the aerosol at ~2 gm-3 and in a confined environment of 1 m3, at a relative humidity of 50 to 65%, the entire species of sodium compound aerosol becomes sodium carbonate within 500 s from the onset of fire.