ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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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
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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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August 2024
Nuclear Technology
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Latest News
Oklo completes end-to-end demonstration of advanced fuel recycling
Oklo Inc. has announced that it has completed the first end-to-end demonstration of its advanced fuel recycling process as part of an ongoing $5 million project in collaboration with Argonne and Idaho National Laboratories. Oklo’s goal: scaling up its fuel recycling capabilities to deploy a commercial-scale recycling facility that would increase advanced reactor fuel supplies and enhance fuel cost effectiveness for its planned sodium fast reactors.
Edward T. Dugan, Kiratadas Kutikkad
Nuclear Technology | Volume 103 | Number 1 | July 1993 | Pages 79-92
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A34831
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Reactor dynamics and system stability studies are performed on a conceptual burst-mode gaseous core reactor space nuclear power system. This concept operates on a closed Brayton cycle in the burst mode (on the order of 100-MW output for a few thousand seconds) using a disk magnetohydrodynamic generator for energy conversion. The fuel is a gaseous mixture of UF4 or UF6 and helium. Nonlinear dynamic analysis is performed using circulating-fuel, point-reactor-kinetics equations along with thermodynamic, lumped-parameter heat transfer and one-dimensional isentropic flow equations. The gaseous nature of the fuel plus the fact that the fuel is circulating lead to dynamic behavior that is quite different from that of conventional solid-core systems. For the transients examined, Doppler fuel temperature and moderator temperature feedbacks are insignificant when compared with reactivity feedback associated with fuel gas density variations. The gaseous fuel density power coefficient of reactivity is capable of rapidly stabilizing the system, within a few seconds, even when large positive reactivity insertions are imposed; however, because of the strength of this feedback, standard external reactivity insertions alone are inadequate to bring about significant power level changes during normal reactor operation. Additional methods of reactivity control, such as changes in the gaseous fuel mass flow rate or core inlet pressure, are required to achieve desired power level control. Finally, linear stability analysis gives results that are qualitatively in agreement with the nonlinear analysis. Quantitatively, however, there are significant differences between the predictions from the linearized and nonlinear models, and this is due to the highly nonlinear nature of the fuel mass feedback.