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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
Michael Pietrykowski, Carol Smidts (Ohio State)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 296-307
Hardware-in-the-loop test configurations require real-time execution speeds from their simulation components for best results. Slower-than-real-time simulations can degrade test result accuracy, completely invalidate a test, and potentially even damage the hardware component being tested; however, some simulations required for testing cannot be guaranteed to run in real time or faster-than-real-time. Thus, we developed a method to allow slower-than-real-time simulations to be used in HIL test setups. Input signals to the simulation are predicted using a simplified hardware model. The simulation uses these predicted values to run “ahead” of the hardware component in time. When a sufficient time margin is obtained, depending on the actual execution speed of the simulation, the hardware component is connected to the stored simulation results computed using the predicted inputs from the hardware model and the test commences. Simulation results are supplied to the hardware component in real time, for as long as the simulation time margin remains. A case study using a small modular reactor simulation code shows that using this method allows test lengths at least 350% longer and simulation error of 0.6% compared to 36%.
