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Division Spotlight
Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences
The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
Meeting Spotlight
Conference on Nuclear Training and Education: A Biennial International Forum (CONTE 2025)
February 3–6, 2025
Amelia Island, FL|Omni Amelia Island Resort
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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February 2025
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Latest News
“Summer time” again? Santee Cooper thinks so
South Carolina public utility Santee Cooper and its partner South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) called a halt to the Summer-2 and -3 AP1000 construction project in July 2017, citing costly delays and the bankruptcy of Westinghouse. The well-chronicled legal fallout included indictments and settlements, and ultimately left Santee Cooper with the ownership of nonnuclear assets at the construction site in Jenkinsville, S.C.
Kelly M. McCary, Brandon A. Wilson, Anthony H. Birri, Christian Petrie (ORNL), Thomas E. Blue (Ohio State)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 469-477
Optical fibers provide a variety of options for instrumentation in reactor environments. Optical fibers can be used to measure multiple physical phenomena including, temperature, strain, pressure, and fluid level. In addition to the various sensing applications, optical fibers are immune to electromagnetic interference, have a small footprint (~100 ?m), and a fast response. The Department of Energy and Idaho National Laboratory have considered optical fibers for use as in-pile instrumentation in the Transient Reactor Test Facility (TREAT). TREAT was designed to test reactor fuels under accident conditions by replicating accident conditions for a variety of reactor transients, such as those associated with a loss of coolant accident (LOCA). This work investigates silica fiber optic temperature sensors with inscribed type-II fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) under conditions similar to those that would be experienced in a TREAT transient. Separate effects testing was used to test the sensors under high-temperature step transients and under irradiation up to a total fluence similar to that of TREAT. Specifically, this work investigates distributed temperature measurements, using the Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry (OFDR) sensing technique, using a Luna Innovations Optical Backscatter Reflectometer (OBR) 4600, with silica optical fibers inscribed with type-II fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). In conclusion, separate effects testing of type-II FBGs in silica optical fiber, to high temperature and to neutron fluences that are an order of magnitude larger than fluences that are anticipated for TREAT tests, demonstrate that type-II FBGs in silica optical fiber hold great promise for high-temperature reactor instrumentation in TREAT.