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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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
TerraPower begins U.K. regulatory approval process
Seattle-based TerraPower signaled its interest this week in building its Natrium small modular reactor in the United Kingdom, the company announced.
TerraPower sent a letter to the U.K.’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, formally establishing its intention to enter the U.K. generic design assessment (GDA) process. This is TerraPower’s first step in deployment of its Natrium technology—a 345-MW sodium fast reactor coupled with a molten salt energy storage unit—on the international stage.
Başak Saraç-Lesavre
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 9 | September 2021 | Pages 1366-1376
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1884492
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Making new nuclear investments is a challenging task. Their “value” is neither given nor stable: It is constantly being reformulated through processes of evaluation and, therefore, of valuation. The paper follows the specific uses of a standard method, the levelized cost of electricity, by different centers of calculations during a period marked by the intense scrutiny of nuclear energy policy and of the adoption of alternative nuclear fuel cycle technologies: from the George W. Bush administration through the beginning of the Barack Obama administration. Rather than concentrating on the finality of those calculations and their subsequent effects on the reordering of spent nuclear fuel as “waste” or “value,” the author develops the notion of “style of revaluation” and shows how concerned actors enacted different logics of valuation and embedded different audiences in their uses of the same calculative device. The paper characterizes two styles of revaluation related with this period. In the first style, referred to here as the “monetary figures of dissent,” a multitude of disagreements over political and moral values associated with alternative fuel cycle technologies are translated into into the language of economic expertise and monetary figures, while policy makers are designated as the audience for the calculations. In the second style, which the author refers to as the “return-on-investment,” financial investor at large is considered as the audience for the calculations, and investment is to be guided by the morality of the return-on-investment. Such assessments are critical for science and democracy. It is crucial that their designers and users, whether those are academics, practitioners, or policy makers, acknowledge and articulate moral and political values they inscribe in them.