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Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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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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Latest News
Vogtle-3 shuts down for valve issue
One of the new Vogtle units in Georgia was shut down unexpectedly on Monday last week for a valve issue that has been investigated and repaired. According to multiple local news outlets, Georgia Power reported on July 17 that unit 3 was back in service.
Southern Company spokesperson Jacob Hawkins confirmed that Vogtle-3 went off line at 9:25 p.m. on July 8 “due to lowering water levels in the steam generators caused by a valve issue on one of the three main feedwater pumps.”
Joel A. Kulesza
Nuclear Technology | Volume 175 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 228-237
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 16th Biennial Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division / Radiation Transport and Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A12294
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the computational fluid dynamics analysis to determine the necessary cooling airflow rates in the reactor cavity of a nuclear power plant during operation, the heat generated in the sacrificial bioshield and adjacent components is a significant source term. Traditionally, a three-dimensional (3-D) flux synthesis method is used to calculate the heat generation rate in the bioshield for reactors with a cylindrical reactor cavity because there is minimal azimuthal variation. However, the AP1000™ reactor incorporates an octagonal reactor cavity design with 12 ex-core detectors, leading to potentially significant impacts on the azimuthal heat generation rate distribution. Therefore, it was of interest to benchmark the traditional flux synthesis method with full 3-D discrete ordinates methods. Because of an uncertainty in the amount of mesh refinement necessary to have confidence in the results, a sensitivity study on the mesh refinement was performed with a parallel 3-D discrete ordinates code. This allowed a comparison with an industry-standard serial 3-D discrete ordinates code in terms of both execution speed and calculated results.The results suggest that for angular positions where the flux synthesis method incorporates an axial model, there is relatively good agreement with 3-D methods (within ±20%). In areas remote from axial models, there are differences of up to a factor of 2 in a nonconservative direction. Furthermore, a recently developed parallel 3-D discrete ordinates radiation transport code was shown to produce results generally consistent with the industry-standard 3-D code used (within 2.5%). Finally, the parallel code completed its calculations in 10% of the time required by the serial code for an identically sized problem.