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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
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.”
Pooran Joshi, Tolga Aytug, Shannon Mahurin, Richard Mayes, Sacit Cetiner, Hong Wang, Ivan Kravchenko, Yanwen Zhang, Anton Ievlev, Lauren Nuckols, Roger Kisner (ORNL)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1416-1424
Successful ubiquitous deployment of advanced reactors will depend to a large extent on the development of high-performance materials and sensors. Recently, there has been increasing interest in advanced reactors operating at very high temperatures (greater than 700 °C) and using molten salts as the primary coolant. In such reactor systems, temperature and pressure measurements are conducted using standard legacy thermocouples and pressure measurement technologies, both of which suffer from resolution issues, inaccuracies, and drift under harsh operating temperature and radiation conditions. We report on the structural, electrical, and mechanical characteristics of SiC materials and devices for the development of an integrated monolithic sensor unit capable of simultaneously monitoring temperature, pressure and flow in molten salt reactors, while at the same time exhibiting significant improvements in resolution, accuracy and signal-to-noise ratio. Wide bandgap and chemical inertness of SiC make it suitable for harsh environment sensor applications. We report on the development of a SiC pressure sensor exploiting its piezoresistive properties. Attempts have been made to fabricate thermally stable pressure sensor through doping induced high gauge factor. Both n-type and p-type SiC wafers, implanted and in-situ doped, have been investigated in the present study to analyze the impact of dopant type and concentration on the piezoresistive characteristics. The microstructure and composition of SiC samples have been analyzed by AFM, XRD, SIMS, and RBS techniques. The electrical conductivity of the SiC samples has been measured by 4-point probe technique. The mechanical measurements are being conducted on SiC beams with photolithographically defined surface piezoresistors. Temperature dependent electrical properties of the doped SiC sensors are also being investigated to develop high performance sensors that can operate at temperatures beyond the limits of conventional silicon CMOS materials and devices.