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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 8–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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DNFSB’s Summers ends board tenure, extending agency’s loss of quorum
Lee
Summers
The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, the independent agency responsible for ensuring that Department of Energy facilities are protective of public health and safety, announced that the board’s acting chairman, Thomas Summers, has concluded his service with the agency, having completed his second term as a board member on October 18.
Summers’ departure leaves Patricia Lee, who joined the DNFSB after being confirmed by the Senate in July 2024, as the board’s only remaining member and acting chair. Lee’s DNFSB board term ends in October 2027.
S. R. Bierman, B. M. Durst, E. D. Clayton, B. W. Howes
Nuclear Technology | Volume 49 | Number 1 | June 1980 | Pages 40-46
Technical Paper | Nuclear Power Reactor Safety / Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A32504
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Criticality experiments with Fast Test Reactor (FTR) fuel pin lattices in water and reflected with concrete have provided benchmark-type data for lattice pitches of 9.53, 12.63, 15.41, and 19.06 mm (water-to-fuel volume ratios of 3.34, 6.92,10.99, and 17.55, respectively). At these center-to-center fuel pin spacings, 554, 260, 191, and 152 fuel pins were required for criticality in rectangular lattices 28, 18, 18, and 14 fuel pins wide, respectively. This corresponds to a decrease of ∼7% from that previously observed in similar lattices with full water reflection. However, the FTR fuel pin design essentially limited the concrete reflection to only the four sides of each fuel lattice.