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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
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
B. Richardson, J. King, A. Alajo, S. Usman, C. H. C. Giraldo
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 187 | Number 1 | July 2017 | Pages 100-106
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2017.1292089
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To validate an MCNP5 model of the Missouri S&T Research Reactor (MSTR), temperature and void effects on reactivity experiments were simulated and performed. We compared the keff of the modeled reactor mirroring the position of all control rods to the actual critical reactor (keff = 1.00000). In the simulation we modeled three different scenarios. In the first two scenarios, the reactor is modeled as isothermal at two different temperatures (measured experimentally near the core), and in the third scenario, we split the core into bottom and top parts and used interpolated values for the temperatures of both halves. The model predicted keff’s for the “critical reactor” between 1.00234 and 1.00248 (±0.00018) when using as temperature the experimental thermocouple readings at the top of the core and keff’s between 1.00296 to 1.00383 (±0.00018) when using the temperature of thermocouple readings at the bottom of the core. In the third experiment, a linear vertical temperature profile was included in the model (only top and bottom of the core), and the model predicted keff’s between 1.00218 and 1.00302 (±0.00018). The keff modeled and experimental values differed by as much as 0.40%. A void coefficient of the reactivity experiment was also simulated introducing a void tube in the model and the control rods made to mirror the critical experimental reactor with an identical void.