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Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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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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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.
Cole Gentry, G. Ivan Maldonado, Ondrej Chvala, Bojan Petrovic
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 187 | Number 2 | August 2017 | Pages 166-184
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2017.1312931
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study presents a thorough parametric neutronic analysis of a plate-based tristructual isotropic (TRISO) fuel particle bearing liquid salt–cooled reactor assembly. The analyses presented investigated the effects of altering fuel enrichment, packing fraction, plate region thicknesses, assembly structure thicknesses, assembly size, numbers of plates per assembly, use of burnable poison materials, replacement of assembly and plate carbon material with silicon carbide, and use of uranium nitride fuel kernels. The effects or trends observed included reactivity behavior, discharge burnup, cycle length, and other key design parameters such as moderator temperature coefficients, coolant density coefficients, control blade worth, and impacts upon power peaking (i.e., power and flux distributions).
This study is based upon two-dimensional lattice physics calculations involving the SERPENT 2 code and by using the nonlinear reactivity model as a reasonable tool for predicting discharge burnup. The reported results show that the system’s reactivity can be significantly altered by varying these design parameters, thus providing a starting point for future design optimization studies, and it is understood that future studies will need to be expanded to equilibrium full core analysis for more complete and accurate design and safety assessments, which is also a work in progress.