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Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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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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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.
Kaiyue Zeng, Jason Hou, Kostadin Ivanov, Matthew Anderson Jessee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 12 | December 2019 | Pages 1618-1637
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1580533
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In recent years, the demand to provide best-estimate predictions with confident bounds is increasing for the nuclear reactor performance and safety analysis. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Nuclear Energy Agency has been developing an international benchmark of the light water reactor (LWR) uncertainty analysis in modeling (UAM) for the examination of uncertainty quantification and propagation methodologies with various modeling and simulation code systems. The objective of the present work is to develop an uncertainty propagation mechanism based on the stochastic sampling method by taking into account the uncertainties of both basic nuclear data and fuel modeling parameters in the simulation of pressurized water reactors (PWRs) that can be incorporated in the conventional LWR simulation approach. More specifically, the Three Mile Island Unit 1–related exercises from the LWR-UAM benchmark have been modeled using the coupled TRACE/PARCS code system in the three-dimensional core representation. The input uncertainties of the neutronics simulation include few-group cross sections and kinetics parameters generated using the Sampler/Polaris sequence of SCALE 6.2.1. Several heat transfer–related variables for the fuel modeling were considered as sources of input uncertainty of the thermal-hydraulics simulations, including the thermal conductivity of fuel and cladding, fuel heat capacity, and the gap conductance. Dakota was used to sample input parameters of the coupled code system and to perform the uncertainty analysis. Two types of simulations were conducted: steady-state calculation at hot full-power condition and transient scenario initiated by the spatially asymmetric rod ejection accident. Quantities of interest for the steady-state calculation, including core multiplication factor and power peaking factors, were calculated with associated uncertainties. For transient calculations, best-estimate plus uncertainty results of the time evolution of core reactivity, core power, and peak fuel temperature were generated and analyzed. The Wilks’ formula was used to determine the necessary sample size to achieve a 95% confidence of the 95% limit of output quantities of interest. Although the uncertainty propagation and quantification method presented in this paper was developed for PWRs, it could be in general applicable to the multiphysics uncertainty quantification of other types of LWR cores.