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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
Meeting Spotlight
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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Latest News
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.
S. Esnouf, A. Dannoux-Papin, E. Bossé, V. Roux-Serret, C. Chapuzet, F. Cochin, J. Blancher
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 2 | February 2022 | Pages 347-356
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1896927
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission and Orano have developed a modeling tool named the Simulation Tool Of RAdiolysis Gas Emission (STORAGE) for assessing gas generation of intermediate-level waste. The first version of this model was designed to estimate gas (more specifically hydrogen) generation by radiolysis of organic materials contained in waste packages.
To verify the validity of the model, a series of measurements was performed on U, Pu–contaminated solid waste issued from the Orano plutonium laboratories at the MELOX facility. Twenty-one drums containing technological waste (gloves, bags, filters, metallic parts, etc.) packaged inside polyvinyl chloride sleeves were set up and hydrogen production was measured over a period of more than 1 year. Several levels of contamination and organic content were studied.
STORAGE calculations are conservative and most of the time in good agreement with experimental measurements with the uncertainties. As expected, the simplest cases (organic waste or filtering media) are well described by the model. The data are obviously more widely dispersed when the waste is composed of a mixture of organic materials and metal. Nevertheless, an understanding of the waste (package composition) allows a fairly precise description and ultimately a satisfactory estimation of the hydrogen production rate.