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The mission of the Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences (DES) Division is to promote the development and use of those skills and technologies associated with the use of nuclear energy and the optimal management and stewardship of the environment, sustainable development, decommissioning, remediation, reutilization, and long-term surveillance and maintenance of nuclear-related installations, and sites. The target audience for this effort is the membership of the Division, the Society, and the public at large.
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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.
Budhi Sagar
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 123 | Number 3 | July 1996 | Pages 443-454
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE96-A24207
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Assessing long-term performance of geologic repositories requires simulation of flow through heterogeneous geologic formations. The effect on flow field of discontinuities such as fracture zones in such media is not only of interest to waste management professionals but also to those involved in petroleum engineering and water resources development. Significant differences in the space and time scales associated with these discontinuities as compared with those associated with bulk geology cause special problems in modeling. The modeling problems are in addition to the very practical problem inherent in proper topological characterization of the discontinuities and also in field measurement of their flow and transport properties. After briefly reviewing various generally used classes of methods for accommodating heterogeneities represented by fractures in numerical models, a different technique of deriving mass balance equations in the presence of fractures is discussed. Compared with full representation of fractures, the proposed technique provides coarser resolution of the flow field, but it is relatively computationally efficient. Two examples of its application are also provided.