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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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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Latest News
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.
Junichi Miwa, Takeshi Mitsuyasu, Tetsushi Hino (Hitachi, Ltd.)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 1050-1055
The resource-renewable boiling water reactor (RBWR) has been proposed as an innovative boiling water reactor (BWR) that has the capability to burn transuranium elements (TRUs) using a multi-recycling process by hardening the neutron energy spectrum. In this paper, RBWR core configurations with flat radial power distribution are investigated. In general, flat distribution of the radial power will be achieved if fuel bundles with a relatively large amount of fissile nuclides are arranged in a relatively low neutron flux area except for the outermost region of the core. There are two design policies of fuel bundle arrangement for flat distribution of the radial power. One is scatter loading using the local neutron flux gradient area is intentionally produced by arranging fuel bundles. The other is zone loading using the overall neutron flux gradient due to a leakage of neutrons to the radially outer side of the reactor core. For RBWR, both loading policies are adopted in succession. First, zone loading is adopted in the outer region of the reactor core in the radial direction. The fresh fuel bundles that have a relatively large amount of fissile nuclides are arranged in the radial outer region. Scatter loading is also adopted in the inner region of the reactor core in the radial direction. The inner region is divided into several layer rings that consist of a bundle in the angular direction. Layer rings for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cycle fuel are arranged adjacently to each other. The radial power distribution at the end of cycle (EOC) is calculated using the whole core transport calculation, and it is confirmed that the radial power of RBWR is distributed in flat shape to be applied to the combined fuel arrangement of scatter loading and zone loading.
