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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
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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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Latest News
Reboot: Nuclear needs a success . . . anywhere
The media have gleefully resurrected the language of a past nuclear renaissance. Beyond the hype and PR, many people in the nuclear community are taking a more measured view of conditions that could lead to new construction: data center demand, the proliferation of new reactor designs and start-ups, and the sudden ascendance of nuclear energy as the power source everyone wants—or wants to talk about.
Once built, large nuclear reactors can provide clean power for at least 80 years—outlasting 10 to 20 presidential administrations. Smaller reactors can provide heat and power outputs tailored to an end user’s needs. With all the new attention, are we any closer to getting past persistent supply chain and workforce issues and building these new plants? And what will the election of Donald Trump to a second term as president mean for nuclear?
As usual, there are more questions than answers, and most come down to money. Several developers are engaging with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or have already applied for a license, certification, or permit. But designs without paying customers won’t get built. So where are the customers, and what will it take for them to commit?
P. A. Pizzica, H. H. Hummel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 56 | Number 2 | February 1982 | Pages 313-321
Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT82-A32860
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Various loss-of-flow cases have been calculated for a commercial-sized liquid-metal fast breeder reactor. Particular attention has been paid to the development of loss-of-flow-driven transient-overpower (LOF-TOP) conditions. In such conditions, it is crucial to consider when an initial cladding breach might occur in LOF-TOP pins and over what length of time the initial cladding breach might extend in fuel pins failing under burst pressure. This study shows that the neutronic energy deposition in transient calculations including LOF-TOP pin failures can increase substantially compared to a calculation excluding such LOF-TOP failures in two ways. First, there will be an increase if there is no extension of an initial cladding failure in LOF-TOP pins or if there is a relatively long delay in the extension. Secondly, when, in applying a fuel melt fraction criterion for pin failure, the same melt fraction is specified for failure extension as for initial failure, which implies a certain delay time for failure extension, there will be an increase in the energy deposition compared to the case without any LOF-TOP failures only when the specified fuel melt fraction becomes very large. However, even in the case with the largest failure melt fraction, there will be no increase in energy deposition when a rapid enough failure extension is assumed. These calculations make a number of very conservative assumptions. The purpose of the study is not to provide a best estimate of accident conditions but to show how quickly an initial cladding breach must extend in such conservative calculations if it is to limit the increase in neutronic energy deposition.