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Division Spotlight
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.
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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Jul 2024
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
ARPA-E announces $40 million to develop transmutation technologies for UNF
The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) announced $40 million in funding to develop cutting-edge technologies to enable the transmutation of used nuclear fuel into less-radioactive substances. According to ARPA-E, the new initiative addresses one of the agency’s core goals as outlined by Congress: to provide transformative solutions to improve the management, cleanup, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.
M. Gentili, B. Fontaine, G. Rimpault
Nuclear Technology | Volume 192 | Number 1 | October 2015 | Pages 11-24
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-123
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fast reactor designs are currently being revisited aiming at having a consolidated safety dossier. In that frame, studying any perturbation of nominal operating condition is mandatory.
Among different initiators, particular attention is being paid to reactivity insertion due to core assembly bowing and deformation and induced lattice readjustments as a consequence of events such as earthquakes.
In this study, a deterministic calculation scheme based on the mesh projection method has been used in order to evaluate the reactivity changes occurring in a deformed sodium fast reactor core.
With the microscopic cross sections calculated by ECCO, full three-dimensional core calculations are being conducted with ERANOS (DIF3D), VARIANT, and SNATCH to solve neutron transport equations in either diffusion, nodal variational, or Sn transport approximations.
A simple analytical model based on perturbation theory has been developed to identify the main phenomena leading to changes in the core reactivity. Reactivity changes induced by small deformations can be estimated as a summation of reactivity perturbations of individual subassemblies.
The results obtained with this method have been checked by comparing them to those obtained with Monte Carlo simulations. A good agreement is being found allowing the use of this method in realistic problems with significant computer resource reduction.
The different contributions to the reactivity changes confirm the results of the analytical model.