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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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Inkjet droplets of radioactive material enable quick, precise testing at NIST
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have developed a technique called cryogenic decay energy spectrometry capable of detecting single radioactive decay events from tiny material samples and simultaneously identifying the atoms involved. In time, the technology could replace characterization tasks that have taken months and could support rapid, accurate radiopharmaceutical development and used nuclear fuel recycling, according to an article published on July 8 by NIST.
C. Don Fletcher, Mark A. Bolander
Nuclear Technology | Volume 81 | Number 1 | April 1988 | Pages 52-62
Technical Paper | Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT88-A34078
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In Westinghouse four-loop pressurized water reactors (PWRs), many long small-diameter instrument tubes are employed to route flux monitoring instrumentation lines from the lower plenum of the reactor vessel to a flux mapping seal table. A recent safety concern is that a seismic event could hypothetically rupture instrument tubes at the seal table, effectively causing a lower plenum small-break loss-of-coolant accident (SBLOCA). Continued cooling of the reactor core during a SBLOCA requires depressurization of the primary coolant system such that emergency core cooling (ECC) injection flow balances the break flow. For a lower plenum SBLOCA, the break remains liquid-covered, thus retarding primary coolant system depressurization. As a result, for continued cooling of the core, the break must be sufficiently small such that ECC flow balances break flow at elevated pressures. This study investigates instrument tube ruptures at the seal table location. Separate effects analyses investigate instrument tube pressure and heat loss, instrument lines remaining within the tubes, and tube nodalization effects. Systems effects analyses evaluate the significance of the safety concern through a best-estimate, single-failure analysis for the Zion-1 PWR.