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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
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Sung Goo Chi, Nam Zin Cho
Nuclear Technology | Volume 137 | Number 2 | February 2002 | Pages 127-138
Technical Paper | Nuclear Plany Operations and Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-31
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A robust controller is designed by applying the H optimal control theory to the xenon control for the load-following operation of a nuclear reactor. The set of reactor model equations for controller design is a stiff system. This singularly perturbed system arises from the interaction of slow dynamics modes (iodine and xenon concentrations) and fast dynamics modes (neutron density, fuel and coolant temperatures). The singular perturbation technique is used to overcome this stiffness problem. The design specifications are incorporated by the frequency weights using the mixed-sensitivity problem approach. The robustness of H control is demonstrated by comparing it with linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control in the case of a measurement delay of the power measurement system.Since the gains and phase margins of H control are larger than those of LQG control, the H control is expected to provide excellent stability robustness and performance robustness against external disturbances and noises, model parameter variations, and modeling errors as well as hardware failures. It may also provide a practical design method because the design specifications can be easily implemented by the frequency weights.