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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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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Latest News
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.
Svein Sunde, Øivind Berg, Lennart Dahlberg, Nils-Olof Fridqvist
Nuclear Technology | Volume 143 | Number 2 | August 2003 | Pages 103-124
Technical Paper | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technologies | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3401
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A mathematical model for a boiling water reactor steam-turbine cycle was assembled by means of a configurable, steady-state modeling tool TEMPO. The model was connected to live plant data and intermittently fitted to these by minimization of a weighted least-squares object function. The improvement in precision achieved by this reconciliation was assessed from quantities calculated from the model equations linearized around the minimum and from Monte Carlo simulations. It was found that the inclusion of the flow-passing characteristics of the turbines in the model equations significantly improved the precision as compared to simple mass and energy balances, whereas heat transfer calculations in feedwater heaters did not. Under the assumption of linear model equations, the quality of the fit can also be expressed as a goodness-of-fit Q. Typical values for Q were in the order of 0.9. For a validated model Q may be used as a fault detection indicator, and Q dropped to very low values in known cases of disagreement between the model and the plant state. The sensitivity of Q toward measurement faults is discussed in relation to redundancy. The results of the linearized theory and Monte Carlo simulations differed somewhat, and if a more accurate analysis is required, this is better based on the latter. In practical application of the presently employed techniques, however, assessment of uncertainties in raw data is an important prerequisite.