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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 Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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
Direct waste transfer process quickens at Savannah River Site
The Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management’s liquid waste contractor at the Savannah River Site this month marked the first direct transfer of decontaminated waste from the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) to the Saltstone Production Facility (SPF). This is a new step in optimizing waste processing, according to the DOE.
Peter-W. Phlippen, Luc Schlömer, Michael Nekipelov, Roger Vallentin, Bernard Lukas, Stefan Palm, Thomas Mispagel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 201 | Number 1 | January 2018 | Pages 66-79
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1399039
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The decommissioning of nuclear power plants requires project planning and budgeting both during the project and in advance, as well as the secured provision of financial and human resources. When a facility is free from irradiated fuel, the reactor pressure vessel with the nuclear components and the biological shield determine the activity inventory of the facility, which almost exclusively consists of activated radionuclides located in the respective structures. Knowledge of the activity distribution and nuclide vectors of the involved components is of vital importance for decommissioning planning. In this context, the development of a computation procedure is described coupling the Monte Carlo method for the determination of neutron flux densities and spectra with a procedure to perform activation calculations for the determination of nuclide vectors. For this purpose, detailed knowledge of the material composition, particularly the trace-element concentrations of nitrogen and cobalt in steel and additionally of europium and cesium in concrete structures, considerably impacts the accuracy of the calculated activities. Extensive validation using data collected from various nuclear power plants to be decommissioned, such as nuclide activities, neutron flux densities, and neutron and gamma dose rates, demonstrates the reliability of the computed nuclide distributions showing ratios of computed-over-measured values of typically between 0.9 and 3. The practicality of the developed method and the convenient use of the results have already been demonstrated analyzing several German boiling water reactors and pressurized water reactors and developing packaging strategies based on the produced results.