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Young Members Group
The Young Members Group works to encourage and enable all young professional members to be actively involved in the efforts and endeavors of the Society at all levels (Professional Divisions, ANS Governance, Local Sections, etc.) as they transition from the role of a student to the role of a professional. It sponsors non-technical workshops and meetings that provide professional development and networking opportunities for young professionals, collaborates with other Divisions and Groups in developing technical and non-technical content for topical and national meetings, encourages its members to participate in the activities of the Groups and Divisions that are closely related to their professional interests as well as in their local sections, introduces young members to the rules and governance structure of the Society, and nominates young professionals for awards and leadership opportunities available to members.
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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.
David Chandler, R. T. Primm III, G. Ivan Maldonado
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 164 | Number 1 | January 2010 | Pages 53-68
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE09-03
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The mission of the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors Program is to minimize and, to the extent possible, eliminate the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in civilian nuclear applications by working to convert research and test reactors, as well as radioisotope production processes, to low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel and targets. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is currently reviewing the design bases and key operating criteria including fuel operating parameters, enrichment-related safety analyses, fuel performance, and fuel fabrication in regard to converting the fuel of the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) from HEU to LEU.The purpose of this study is to validate Monte Carlo methods currently in use for conversion analyses. The methods have been validated for the prediction of flux values in the reactor target, reflector, and beam tubes, but this study focuses on the prediction of the power density profile in the core. Power distributions were calculated in the fuel elements of the HFIR, a research reactor at ORNL, via MCNP and were compared to experimentally obtained data. This study was performed to validate Monte Carlo methods for power density calculations and to observe biases.A current three-dimensional MCNP model was modified to replicate the 1965 HFIR Critical Experiment 3 (HFIRCE-3). In this experiment, the power profile was determined by counting the gamma activity at selected locations in the core. “Foils” (chunks of fuel meat and clad) were punched out of the fuel elements in HFIRCE-3 following irradiation, and experimental relative power densities were obtained by measuring the activity of these foils and comparing each foil's activity to the activity of a normalizing foil.This analysis consisted of calculating corresponding activities by inserting volume tallies into the modified MCNP model to represent the punchings. The average fission density was calculated for each foil location and then normalized to the reference foil. Power distributions were obtained for clean core (no poison in moderator and symmetrical rod position at 44.536 cm withdrawn with respect to the core axial midplane) and fully poisoned moderator (1.35 grams of boron per liter in moderator and rods fully withdrawn) conditions. The observed deviations between the experimental and calculated values for both conditions were within the reported experimental uncertainties except for some foils located on the top and bottom edges of the fuel plates.
