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Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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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Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
Nicholas T. Saltos, Tunc Aldemir, Richard N. Christensen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 82 | Number 2 | August 1988 | Pages 187-210
Technical Paper | Nuclear Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT88-A34107
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An efficient variational method was developed to solve the transient radial-azimuthal heat conduction problem in nuclear fuel rods under loss-of-coolant-accident (LOCA) conditions. The method is efficient in that it is fast, accurate, and compatible with the modular accident analysis codes already in use in the nuclear industry. The methodology uses the Lebon-Labermont restricted variational principle, with parabolic trial functions in the radial direction and circular trial functions in the azimuthal direction, to reduce the transient heat conduction problem in the rod to a set of first-order ordinary differential equations in time. These equations are then solved by an explicit technique. The solution is in a readily usable form (i.e., averages and gradients can be determined without interpolation) and the same algorithm is used for both one- and two-dimensional problems. The solution technique allows changing the trial functions at every time step to obtain an accurate solution with minimum computing time. The methodology is implemented for a single rod under hypothetical LOCA conditions in order to (a) investigate the sensitivity of the predicted radial-azimuthal temperature distributions to the choice of the trial functions, (b) investigate the importance of nonlinearity effects (i.e., temperature dependence of thermal properties) on rod response, and (c) compare the variational and finite difference techniques with respect to computation time and accuracy of the results. It is shown that the variational technique leads to substantial reduction in computing time (more than a factor of 3) for comparable accuracy.