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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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.
Kiyonobu Yamashita, Ryuichi Shindo, Isao Murata, So Maruyama, Nozomu Fujimoto, Takeshi Takeda
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 122 | Number 2 | February 1996 | Pages 212-228
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE96-A24156
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The high-temperature engineering test reactor has been designed whose outlet gas temperature is 950°C. That is the highest temperature in the world for a block-type high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. The power distribution in the core was optimized by changing the uranium enrichment to maintain the fuel temperature at less than the limit (1600°C). Deviation from the optimized distribution due to the burnup of fissile materials was avoided by flattening time-dependent changes in local reactivities. Flattening was achieved by optimizing the specifications of the burnable poisons. Control rod destruction of the optimized power distribution was avoided by limiting the depth of insertion. The insertion depth of the control rods is limited by reducing the excess reactivity of the whole core by the burnable poisons to the minimum value necessary for operations.