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Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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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Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
Christophe Journeau, Laurence Aufore, Léonie Berge, Claude Brayer, Nathalie Cassiaut-Louis, Nicolas Estre, Frédéric Payot, Pascal Piluso, Jean-Christophe Prele, Shifali Singh, Magali Zabiégo, Eric Pluyette, Frédéric Serre, Béatrice Teisseire
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 1 | January-February 2019 | Pages 239-247
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1479580
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fuel-coolant interaction (FCI) is an important issue for the assessment of severe accident safety for both sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs) and pressurized water reactors (PWRs). For the ASTRID SFR demonstrator, FCI is a key phenomenon affecting the relocation of molten fuel in engineered discharge tubes between the core region and the core catcher plenum. FCI controls jet fragmentation and debris bed formation and raises the issue of potentially energetic vapor explosions in the ASTRID lower head. In this frame, experimental data will be necessary to validate SCONE, the fuel-sodium interaction code under development at CEA. For PWRs, one of the configurations of interest lies within the residual case where in-vessel retention would fail. In this case, it is expected that a light metallic layer would be the first to interact with water, before a heavier oxide melt discharge. Here, steam explosion and debris bed formation are the two major points of interest. Based on the experimental expertise gained from the KROTOS facility and its X-ray radioscopic imaging system, new test facilities have been designed to carry out prototypic (depleted uranium–containing) corium interactions with either sodium or water in PLINIUS2, the CEA future large-mass experimental platform dealing with masses above 100 kg. Some test sections have been specially designed to ensure proper visualization of the fuel, liquid coolant, and vapor phases by an improved X-Ray imaging system. This paper presents the future PLINIUS 2 platform as well as the experimental programs foreseen to study both water-corium and sodium-corium interactions.