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Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo (UWC 2024)
August 4–7, 2024
Marco Island, FL|JW Marriott Marco Island
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Jul 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Vogtle-3 shuts down for valve issue
One of the new Vogtle units in Georgia was shut down unexpectedly on Monday last week for a valve issue that has since been investigated and repaired. According to multiple local news outlets, Georgia Power reported on July 17 that Unit 3 was back in service.
Southern Company spokesperson Jacob Hawkins confirmed that Vogtle-3 went off line at 9:25 p.m. local time on July 8 “due to lowering water levels in the steam generators caused by a valve issue on one of the three main feedwater pumps.”
Richard Bisson, Jamie Coble (Univ of Tennessee, Knoxville)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 102-109
As more variable renewable energy enters the grid, peaking power is increasingly supplied by carbon-emitting natural gas plants. Significant greenhouse gas emissions can be avoided if these gas plants are replaced with carbon-neutral nuclear facilities to provide power to complement renewable generation and meet overall power demand. There is a significant body of work regarding reactor power shaping, especially with control rod movement in mechanical shim control strategies, for both currently operating nuclear power plants and future plant designs, but the literature on load following to meet rapidly varying power demand is less extensive. We have selected the Westinghouse IRIS IPWR as our demonstration for modeling, simulation, and control studies. The current plant model, developed with the aid of the TRANSFORM Library in Modelica, has a point reactor kinetics model, the steam generator system, and a simple balance of plant. The reactor core model has been augmented to include multiple axial nodes, the xenon reactivity contribution, and loss of excess reactivity during burnup to explore plant performance and control over a period of time of up to several hours and at different stages of the reactor life cycle. Preliminary results for load following operation in the IRIS Simulink model developed at the University of Tennessee suggest candidate actuators and strategies for control, especially in the balance of plant for fast transients. The control scheme for the load following operation of the IRIS IPWR model would ultimately lead to the development of real operational mechanisms and principles for SMRs in a grid with a large renewables share. Such principles include the consideration of figures of merit regarding the effect of maneuvers and actuation on plant economics. In the future the model will be augmented with a higher fidelity balance of plant model and integrated with a realistic grid demonstration to evaluate feasibility and performance.