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Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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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Latest News
NRC engineers share their expertise at the University of Puerto Rico
Robert Roche-Rivera and Marcos Rolón-Acevedo are licensed professional engineers who work at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They are also alumni of the University of Puerto Rico–Mayagüez (UPRM) and have been sharing their knowledge and experience with students at their alma mater since last year, serving as adjunct professors in the university’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. During the 2023–2024 school year, they each taught two courses: Fundamentals of Nuclear Science and Engineering, and Nuclear Power Plant Engineering.
Ian Porter, Travis W. Knight, Patrick Raynaud
Nuclear Technology | Volume 190 | Number 2 | May 2015 | Pages 174-182
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-100
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear reactor systems codes have the ability to model the system response in an accident scenario based on known initial conditions (ICs) at the onset of the transient. However, there has been a tendency for these codes to lack the detailed thermomechanical fuel rod response models needed for best-estimate prediction of fuel rod failure. Alternatively, the reverse can be said about fuel performance codes; they can lack the ability to capture and model the thermal-hydraulic (T-H) influence of adjacent fuel rods and the rod's location in the reactor core. This work analyzes the limitations in using fuel performance codes to represent in-reactor conditions as determined by full-core T-H codes. The codes used in this analysis are the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's steady-state fuel performance code FRAPCON-3.5 and T-H code TRACE-V5P3. In order to assess the impact of the limitations found in the codes, several modifications were made to all of the codes to improve code-to-code consistency. The modifications to the fuel performance code include adding the ability to model gamma-ray heating and providing realistic core coolant conditions. The T-H code modifications include adding the ability to model the fuel with axially varying burnup-dependent fuel and cladding dimensional changes and corrosion characteristics. The fuel in a Westinghouse four-loop pressurized water reactor was modeled to assess the impacts these modifications have on fuel performance and ICs for transient analysis. The results of this study show that current modeling assumptions (and limitations) can yield both conservative and nonconservative results on several important licensing criteria.