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This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Hikmet S. Aybar, Tunc Aldemir, Richard N. Christensen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 111 | Number 1 | July 1995 | Pages 1-22
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35140
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Ohio State University Inherently Safe Reactor (OSU-ISR) is a conceptual design for a 340-MW(eIectric) [1000-MW(thermal)], natural circulation, indirectcycle, small boiling water reactor. All the OSU-ISR primary loop components are housed within a prestressed concrete reactor vessel (PCRV). The OSU-ISR performance has been investigated as a function of several design parameters in an attempt to better understand the interdependency among the system variables and hence to establish a knowledge base for the refinement of the conceptual design. The computational tool used in the study is a Dynamic Simulation for Nuclear Power Plants (DSNP) code whose predictions for the steady-state OSU-ISR performance compare favorably with RELAP5/MOD3 results for most of the operational characteristics of interest. The results show that (a) the key quantity that governs the OSU-ISR steadystate performance is the pressure difference between the primary and the secondary loops, (b) the magnitude of water-level swell (which occurs due to void formation in the core during operation and which affects the size of the steam separators that need to be used) can be more effectively controlled by varying the PCRV water level at cold shutdown rather than by varying the internal PCR V dimensions, (c) turbine inlet steam quality can be controlled without substantially affecting the other operational parameters by varying the secondary mass flow rate, and (d) the PCR V pressure and core exit steam quality are most sensitive to changes in the secondary loop pressure. The results also show that if there is a large drop in the secondary loop pressure (e.g., due to a steam line break), then although this pressure drop may induce a large drop in the PCRV pressure, the core flow, and hence core cooling capability, will not be appreciably affected.