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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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 Science and Engineering
May 2025
Nuclear Technology
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Latest News
Judge temporarily blocks DOE’s move to slash university research funding
A group of universities led by the American Association of Universities (AAU) acted swiftly to oppose a policy action by the Department of Energy that would cut the funds it pays to universities for the indirect costs of research under DOE grants. The group filed suit Monday, April 14, challenging a what it termed a “flagrantly unlawful action” that could “devastate scientific research at America’s universities.”
By Wednesday, the U.S. District Court judge hearing the case issued a temporary restraining order effective nationwide, preventing the DOE from implementing the policy or terminating any existing grants.
V. Jagannathan, Usha Pal, R. Karthikeyan, S. Ganesan, R. P. Jain, S. U. Kamat
Nuclear Technology | Volume 133 | Number 1 | January 2001 | Pages 1-32
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT01-A3156
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new reactor concept has been proposed for induction of thorium in an enriched uranium reactor. The neutronic characteristics of the fissile and fertile materials have been exploited to arrive at optimal fuel assembly and core configurations. Each fuel assembly consists of an enriched uranium seed zone and a thoria blanket zone. They are in the form of ring-type fuel clusters. The fuel is contained in vertical pressure tubes placed in a hexagonal lattice array in a D2O moderator. Boiling H2O coolant is used. The 235U enrichment is ~5.4%. The thoria rods contain the 233U bred in situ by irradiation of one batch load of mere thoria clusters (without the seed zone) for one fuel cycle in the same reactor. There is no need for external feed enrichment in thoria rods. Additionally, some moveable thoria clusters are used for the purpose of xenon override. The fissile production rate from the fertile material and the consumption rate of fissile inventory is judiciously balanced by the choice of U/Th fuel rod diameter and the number and location of thoria rods in the fuel assembly and in the core. During steady-state operation at rated power level, there is no need for any conventional control maneuvers such as change in soluble boron concentration or control rod movement as a function of burnup. Burnable poison rods are also not required. A very small reactivity fluctuation of ±2 mk in 300 effective full-power days of operation is achieved and can be nearly met by coolant inlet enthalpy changes or moveable thoria clusters. Control is required only for cold shutdown of the reactor. The uranium as well as thoria rods achieve a fairly high burnup of 30 to 35 GWd/tonne at the time of discharge. Since the excess reactivity for hot-full-power operation is nearly zero at all times during the fuel cycle and since the coefficients of reactivity due to temperature and density variations of coolant are nearly zero by design, there is hardly any possibility of severe accidents involving large reactivity excursions.