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Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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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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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.”
Chaung Lin, Feng-Ling Jeng, Chi-Szu Lee, Raghu Raghavan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 118 | Number 3 | June 1997 | Pages 254-263
Technical Paper | Reactor Operation | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35366
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A hierarchical fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is applied to control the water level in an analytical simulation using a simplified advanced boiling water reactor model. To reduce the control effort of the feedwater pump, the linguistic variable, change in pressure, was adopted. Four linguistic variables were used for the FLC design, and the number of control rules became large if the conventional FLC design method was used. Using a hierarchical rule structure reduces the total number of control rules and thus the final decision tables. To reduce the design effort, two methods were separately developed for fine-tuning. One tunes the scaling factors using an optimization method, and the other tunes the control rules using a method similar to a fuzzy model reference control. The simulation results show that the performance of the hierarchical FLC is comparable to that of the proportional-integral controller, but use of the designed controller results in a shorter settling time.