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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.
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
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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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Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
L. F. Miller, R. G. Cochran, J. W. Howze
Nuclear Technology | Volume 36 | Number 1 | November 1977 | Pages 93-105
Radiation Environments in Nuclear Reactor Power Plant | Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT77-A31963
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The problem of designing a constrained feedback control system for a nuclear reactor is investigated. The constraint imposed is that system stability must be retained under possible loss of any arbitrary feedback signal due to failure of the signal sensor. In addition, the control law is synthesized using only partial state availability, and the nominal control system without sensor failure is designed so that the system performs in a desired fashion. Several mathematical models of the reactor dynamics were employed. However, only a model with negative moderator activity coefficients and a single delayed neutron group was used as an example. This model permits a demonstration of two different computational methods for obtaining the required feedback control laws. The first of these two computational methods uses a global procedure for solving polynomial inequalities that represent the stabilization problem. The second method used an algorithm for decreasing a spectral radius function until it is negative, thus allowing implicit control over eigenvalue placement.