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Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
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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2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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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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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.
Chiradeep Gupta
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 4 | April 2023 | Pages 560-581
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2143730
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Ductile-to-brittle transition (DBT) characteristics of three steels for reactor pressure vessel (RPV) belt line application are analyzed from new parameters based on model functions describing the strength and toughness characteristics of the materials. In order to estimate nil-ductility temperature (NDT) from strength property, a strain rate–compensated temperature parameter based on the thermally activated deformation of materials is adopted. A measure of NDT is determined from tensile strength properties for the first time assuming an estimated notch tip strain rate at the lower shelf. It is estimated to be 110, 42, and 106 K for the Cr-Mo-V-Ni, 20MnMoNi55, and A533B steels, respectively. The measure of ductile-to-brittle transition temperature (DBTT) in steels using 41-J Charpy impact-absorbed energy on the basis of a logistic class of functions is compared and shown to be equivalent with those obtained from fitting the tanh model equation.
A bi-logistic function based on the concept of separable parameters representing the fracture of ductile and brittle zones in steels within the DBTT regime was applied to model the Charpy impact energy behavior of the three steels. The bi-logistic function-fitting parameters yielded a new measure of brittleness as a DBT characteristic of steels that correlated well with other measures of transition temperature of the selected RPV steels. The parameters from the hyperbolic and logistic fitting were used to develop a model relationship suitable for the generation of a master curve based on Charpy energy in exponential form that unifies the transition temperature behavior of the selected western and eastern RPV materials. The model relationship is also found to closely predict ~5 K of the reference temperature To determined as per American Society for Testing and Materials standard E1921 of the selected RPV steels.