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Division Spotlight
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.
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
DOE issues final RFQ for WIPP clean energy initiative
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has issued a request for qualifications for interested parties and prospective offerors looking to enter into a realty agreement for carbon-pollution-free electricity (CFE) projects at the department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant site in southeastern New Mexico.
Woong Heo, Yonghee Kim
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 189 | Number 1 | January 2018 | Pages 41-55
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2017.1373516
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Thermomechanical effects, irradiation, and structural restrictions result in very tangled behavior of assemblies in sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs). Reactivity feedback caused by the assembly behavior (deformation or distortion) is one of the key parameters in the inherent safety analysis of fast reactor systems. However, to date there has been no accurate and efficient deterministic way to compute directly the reactivity changes by actual local perturbation. This paper evaluates the feasibility of applying the Galerkin finite element method (GFEM) based on linear shape functions to estimate reactivity changes due to local core deformations in SFRs. Assessment of reactivity changes is conducted for six types of deformation scenarios of the two-dimensional prototype Gen-IV SFR. Uniform expansions and local deformations are included in the scenarios. The results from the multigroup diffusion equation based on the GFEM are compared with references calculated by MCNP5. The study shows that diffusion analysis based on the GFEM with linear shape functions can properly estimate reactivity changes by core deformation in the fast reactor with ~13% relative error of Δρ.