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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.
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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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Latest News
NRC okays construction permits for Hermes 2 test facility
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced yesterday that it has directed staff to issue construction permits to Kairos Power for the company's proposed Hermes 2 nonpower test reactor facility to be built at the Heritage Center Industrial Park in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The permits authorize Kairos to build a facility with two 35-MWt test reactors that would use molten salt to cool the reactor cores.
Milos I. Atz, Massimiliano Fratoni
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 5 | May 2023 | Pages 677-695
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2146475
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Future utilization of nuclear power may involve fuel cycles that incorporate new reactors and new fuel utilization schemes. In comparing fuel cycles in terms of their waste characteristics, many previous studies have focused on properties intrinsic to the wastes themselves: mass, radioactivity, and/or radiotoxicity. These properties do not directly inform analyses that evaluate waste management strategies, impacts, or risks. For these, information about waste packages and waste loading is critical. This paper reports on research performed to bridge the divide between nuclear fuel cycle and waste management analyses while accommodating the diversity of reactors, processes, and waste forms that could be utilized by advanced fuel cycles. An object-oriented Python code, Nuclear Waste Analysis in Python, was written to connect fuel cycle data with backend process information, thereby generating waste form characteristics and package inventories. The backend process models are informed by literature review and engineering judgment. The package is applied to the fuel cycles considered in the Fuel Cycle Evaluation and Screening (FCES) study and is benchmarked against the FCES study waste management evaluation metric data for mass and radioactivity. Hypothetical waste package inventories are reported for each fuel cycle as functions of spent fuel and high-level waste loading.