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Reactor Physics
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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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.
Yousef M. Farawila, Donald R. Todd, Maurice J. Ades, José N. Reyes Jr.
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 184 | Number 3 | November 2016 | Pages 321-333
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE16-24
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Numerical solutions for transient fluid flow in nuclear systems often suffer from the effects of numerical diffusion and damping making the assessment of system stability rather difficult. Efforts for coping with this problem include research and development of algorithms with improved fidelity for stability calculations as they apply to particular problems. Benchmarking exercises in comparison with specially designed experiments are necessary to verify algorithmic fidelity and guide the development and adjustments of the algorithms. In this paper, an analytical approach is introduced where a simple model—an analogue—is constructed such that the basic instability mechanisms are represented in a form that lends itself to analytical solutions that are free from the diffusion and damping problems that plague finite volume algorithms. Direct conclusions can be made regarding the stability of a system in the case where the analogue closely resembles the system under study. However, when the system is too complex for direct assessment, the stability fidelity of numerical solutions can be assessed by comparing the numerical solution for the simple system with the analytical solution and using the comparison to quantify any damping effects and justify the application of the numerical method to the complex representation of the real system under study. The theoretical analysis is supported by reference to recent test data in the NuScale Integral System Test (NIST) facility representing a scaled-down NuScale module.