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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
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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Latest News
Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
J. A. Turnbull, S. K. Yagnik, M. Hirai, D. M. Staicu, C. T. Walker
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 179 | Number 4 | April 2015 | Pages 477-485
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE14-20
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To investigate the potential disintegration to powder of high-burnup fuel pellets during a rapid temperature transient, the Nuclear Fuels Industry Research (NFIR) Program commissioned two independent scoping studies. The first investigated the effect of hydrostatic restraint pressure on fission gas release during a series of fast temperature ramps. In the second study laser heating was used to investigate the temperature at which small samples of fuel fragmented. From the observations made in these studies, local burnup and temperature thresholds of 71 MWd/kg HM and 645°C were identified for fuel pulverization during a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA). It is shown that fine fragment production in integral LOCA tests performed in other independent investigations at Studsvik and Halden was generally well predicted using these thresholds of burnup and temperature. The NFIR investigations also reveal that the degree of pulverization and resulting fragment size are dependent on the temperature ramp rate. Moreover, they confirm that pulverization can be substantially reduced by the imposition of hydrostatic pressure.