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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
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.
Ulrich Hesse
Nuclear Technology | Volume 82 | Number 2 | August 1988 | Pages 173-186
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT88-A34106
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Reliable prediction of the characteristics of irradiated light water reactor fuels (e.g., afterheat power, neutron and gamma radiation sources, final uranium and plutonium contents) is needed for many aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. Two main problems must be solved: the simulation of all isotopic nuclear reactions and the simulation of neutron fluxes setting the reactions in motion. In state-of-the-art computer techniques, a combination of specialized codes for lattice cell and burnup calculations is preferred to solve these cross-linked problems in time or burnup step approximation. In the program system OREST, developed for official and commercial tasks in the Federal Republic of Germany nuclear fuel cycle, the well-known codes HAMMER and ORIGEN are directly coupled with a fuel rod temperature module. Starting with a zero-dimensional burnup code such as ORIGEN, the importance of one- and more-dimensional neutron flux calculations in the field of isotope generation and depletion calculation is shown. OREST results are compared with measured isotope concentrations of depleted uranium dioxide samples and of mixed oxide (MOX) rods irradiated in different assembly positions. In addition, published results from two lattice cell burnup program systems are shown. Currently, ORIGEN (1973 version) is applied by many users in a stand-alone mode. The achievable accuracies are discussed. Only a few measurements of irradiated MOX fuels have been available. Considering the actual projects for reprocessing and recycling of nuclear fuels, further and fully documented isotope analyses are needed.