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Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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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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.
Akio Yamamoto, Kuniharu Kinoshita, Tomoaki Watanabe, Tomohiro Endo, Yasuhiro Kodama, Yasunori Ohoka, Tadashi Ushio, Hiroaki Nagano
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 181 | Number 2 | October 2015 | Pages 160-174
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE14-152
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Uncertainties of various neutronics characteristics in commercial boiling water reactor (BWR) and pressurized water reactor (PWR) cores due to cross-section covariance are evaluated by the Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) method, which is an efficient random sampling algorithm. Thermal-hydraulic feedback and burnup effects are fully and explicitly taken into account using a licensing-grade core simulator. Uncertainties for various core characteristics are evaluated by the statistical processing of core calculation results based on the LHS method. The calculation results indicate that uncertainty of critical eigenvalue (i.e., core reactivity) in the BWR core is comparable to that of a typical PWR core. On the other hand, uncertainties of assembly relative power distribution and maximum assembly burnup in the present BWR core are much smaller than those of the present PWR core. The strong thermal-hydraulic feedback effect in the BWR core significantly contributes to the difference of uncertainties in BWR and PWR cores.