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Division Spotlight
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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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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Latest News
Securing the advanced reactor fleet
Physical protection accounts for a significant portion of a nuclear power plant’s operational costs. As the U.S. moves toward smaller and safer advanced reactors, similar protection strategies could prove cost prohibitive. For tomorrow’s small modular reactors and microreactors, security costs must remain appropriate to the size of the reactor for economical operation.
Stefano Passerini, Mujid S. Kazimi, Eugene Shwageraus
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 178 | Number 2 | October 2014 | Pages 186-201
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-20
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experience with modeling fuel cycle options reveals that the large amount of generated data makes it difficult to understand trade-offs among fuel cycle policies. This paper shows that numerical optimization can be used to better identify impacts of fuel cycle policies and condense the generated data against a few significant criteria. The once-through cycle is considered the baseline case, while advanced technologies with fuel recycling characterize the alternative fuel cycle options available in the future. The options include, among others, recycling the fissile materials from spent light water reactor fuel in fast reactors (FRs) as well as deployment of innovative recycling reactor technologies, such as the 235U initiated FRs. Additionally, a first-of-a-kind optimization scheme for the nuclear fuel cycle analysis is described. Optimization metrics of interest to different stakeholders in the fuel cycle (economics, fuel resource utilization, high-level waste, transuranic materials/proliferation management, and environmental impact) are utilized for two different optimization techniques: a linear one and a stochastic one. Stakeholder elicitation provided sets of relative weights for the identified metrics appropriate to each stakeholder group, which were then used to demonstrate feasibility of arrival at optimum fuel cycle configurations for recycling technologies. The stochastic optimization tool, based on a genetic algorithm, was used to identify noninferior solutions according to Pareto’s dominance approach to optimization. The main trade-off for fuel cycle optimization was found to be between emphasizing economics versus most of the other identified metrics.