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The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.”
In Seop Jeon, Sang Hun Lee, Hyun Gook Kang (RPI)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 1730-1739
Severe accidents are the unexpected events that cannot be appropriately mitigated because there are no appropriate mitigation systems or strategies. Based on lessons learned from these accidents, the establishment of all possible mitigation strategies that take into account available mitigation systems is essential. Since nuclear power plant (NPP) have become larger and more complex, systematic approach to develop mitigation procedure is needed. To handle this complexity, multilevel flow modeling (MFM) is suggested and utilized to develop proper mitigation procedures for the NPP. The MFM is a well-known qualitative modeling methodology for representing complex systems at different abstraction levels of specifications. In this study, time-related information is additionally considered to reflect dynamic features to the conventional MFM model. If the time-related information is added to the MFM model, more diverse and quantitative mitigation procedures can be established. For example, in case of the water supply system with the backup tank that is described in this paper, one mitigation procedure that is the use of backup tank can be developed with the conventional MFM method. If time-to-propagate concept is applied, we can develop mitigation strategy as follow: (1) use water in the tank 1 for 3128s then use water in the tank 2 for additional 3303s then use water in the backup tank, (2) use water in the tank 2 for 2757s then use water in the backup tank. These various accident mitigation options help to mitigate accident effectively.