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Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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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Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Sven Bader, Ashley Spry (AREVA Federal Services, LLC)
Proceedings | 16th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM 2017) | Charlotte, NC, April 9-13, 2017 | Pages 647-652
A methodology is described that allows for the direct comparison of many diverse objectives with an end result of a rank-ordered evaluation of options that reflects the decision makers' preferences. This methodology, the multi-attribute utility analysis (MUA), is utilized to establish a ranking of routes and associated modes of transport (e.g., truck, rail, barge) to move used/spent nuclear fuel (UNF/SNF) from independent spent fuel storage installations (ISFSIs) to a Class I carrier. Preliminary evaluations have been performed to identify viable modes of transport from some ISFSIs where the only remaining vestige of the reactor site is the ISFSI and hence, very little transportation infrastructure remains at these “stranded” sites for performing these shipments. The MUA is a structured methodology designed to handle the trade-offs among multiple objectives (i.e., attributes) and provides a transparent, rational, and defensible analysis that is easy to explain and communicate and has been used for decades to provide logically consistent analyses of options (i.e., modes and routes) that are intended to achieve more than one objective, where no single option dominates the others on all of those objectives. The ultimate result from the MUA is a list(s) of the most to the least favored/preferred routes from the ISFSI. This paper provides an overview of the MUA methodology and provides examples of its application to several ISFSIs with shutdown reactors.