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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
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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
El Salvador: Looking to nuclear
In 2022, El Salvador’s leadership decided to expand its modest, mostly hydro- and geothermal-based electricity system, which is supported by expensive imported natural gas and diesel generation. They chose to use advanced nuclear reactors, preferably fueled by thorium-based fuels, to power their civilian efforts. The choice of thorium was made to inform the world that the reactor program was for civilian purposes only, and so they chose a fuel that was plentiful, easy to source and work with, and not a proliferation risk.
Sasa Kovacevic, Vivek Agarwal, John W. Buttles
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 3 | March 2022 | Pages 468-483
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1905476
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear power plants have a very large catalog of regularly manipulated manual valves. To achieve the desired performance and operating margins, skilled technical staff use these valves to control, start, stop, regulate, and throttle the flow of various fluids through plant systems. Wireless valve position indication (VPI) sensor system technology would enable online monitoring of manual valve positions. Using additive manufacturing techniques, the wireless VPI sensor system is retrofitted onto existing manual valves using a sensor mounting unit (SMU). The structural stability of the retrofitted SMU is important for reliably measuring valve position with the wireless VPI sensor system. This paper presents the design, numerical modeling, and experimental validation of SMUs for rising stem gate and rising handle globe valves. Three types of materials, i.e., ULTEM 9085, chopped carbon fiber reinforced nylon, and continuous carbon fiber reinforced nylon, were used to three-dimensionally print the SMUs. The free vibration responses of these SMUs are presented in this paper. The results show how the choice of design, material, and other printer parameters impact SMU vibration responses, especially for the first and second eigenfrequencies. Next, performance of the SMUs is evaluated through both numerical and experimental vibration analysis, and then, the consistency of outcomes using each analysis type is presented. In terms of the stiffness-to-weight ratio and eigenfrequencies, the research shows the SMU printed with 5% continuous carbon fiber reinforced nylon fared significantly better than those printed from the other two materials.