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Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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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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Nuclear new build procurement considerations
It may seem counterintuitive, but the best time to enhance the ability to support operations and maintenance for a new plant is before construction starts. This is one of many lessons learned by the currently operating nuclear fleet. As construction and startup of many nuclear facilities was completed, it quickly became evident that the ability to efficiently support operations and maintenance was limited. Most of the information necessary to establish and manage procurement of spare and replacement items, maintenance, and configuration of the facilities was unavailable and had to be gathered on a case-by-case, “on-demand” basis. Absence of necessary information and the associated challenges resulted in the need for staff augmentation and multiyear-long projects to develop equipment bills of material and maintenance programs and to perform technical evaluations for the huge quantities of spare and replacement items being requested.
Jinho Song, Changwook Huh, Namduk Suh
Nuclear Technology | Volume 178 | Number 3 | June 2012 | Pages 258-266
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A13592
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Weaknesses of the current Severe Accident Management Guideline (SAMG) in handling the cooling of a molten core are discussed, and three improvements for the SAMG are presented. It is suggested that instrumentation to detect either a breach of the reactor vessel or a discharge of corium into the reactor cavity is essential to effectively perform the SAMG. A detailed analysis for a specific plant is necessary to make a decision as to whether preflooding or postflooding should be initiated for effective molten core cooling. Also, an optimal choice of depressurization capacity not only would significantly delay failure of the reactor vessel but also would increase the coolability margin of the molten corium in a reactor cavity. Analyses using the MELCOR computer code were performed for the Ulchin Units 1 and 2 and Kori Unit 1 nuclear power plants to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed improvements in cooling of the molten core in the reactor cavity, where in-vessel retention of molten corium by preflooding is not feasible.