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The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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Latest News
Feinstein Institutes to research novel radiation countermeasure
The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, home of the research institutes of New York’s Northwell Health, announced it has received a five-year, $2.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate the potential of human ghrelin, a naturally occurring hormone, as a medical countermeasure against radiation-induced gastrointestinal syndrome (GI-ARS).
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.