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Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
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2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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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Nuclear new build procurement considerations
It may seem counterintuitive, but the best time to enhance the ability to support operations and maintenance for a new plant is before construction starts. This is one of many lessons learned by the currently operating nuclear fleet. As construction and startup of many nuclear facilities was completed, it quickly became evident that the ability to efficiently support operations and maintenance was limited. Most of the information necessary to establish and manage procurement of spare and replacement items, maintenance, and configuration of the facilities was unavailable and had to be gathered on a case-by-case, “on-demand” basis. Absence of necessary information and the associated challenges resulted in the need for staff augmentation and multiyear-long projects to develop equipment bills of material and maintenance programs and to perform technical evaluations for the huge quantities of spare and replacement items being requested.
Yoshitaka Naito, Kazuo Azekura
Nuclear Technology | Volume 204 | Number 1 | October 2018 | Pages 94-100
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1469344
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this paper, a method is proposed to evaluate the extent of subcriticality of an accident-damaged nuclear reactor. With this method the activity ratio of two fission product (FP) rare gas nuclides and is measured. From the measured value, the value of the nuclides in the fuel region is estimated by correcting for the time lag incurred when the gases diffuse from the fuel region to the measuring point. A simple expression for an effective multiplication factor has been derived that uses the corrected -to- activity ratio and the -to- fission yield ratios of and but that does not require information on the amount or distribution of the fuel material, making the proposed method very simple. This method has the advantage that FP rare gases can easily leak from the reactor core through many openings and gaps, reaching germanium counters without reacting with other materials.