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Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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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Proof of concept: The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment in Nuclear News
By late 1960, when the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission authorized plans to build a Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the lab already had about 13 years of experimentation with molten salt reactors under its longest-serving lab director, Alvin Weinberg. The MSRE operated from 1965 to 1969, proving that molten salt reactors could operate reliably, and with alternatives to uranium-235 too.
Arkal Shenoy, John Saurwein, Malcolm Labar, Hankwon Choi, John Cosmopoulos
Nuclear Technology | Volume 178 | Number 2 | May 2012 | Pages 170-185
Technical Paper | Small Modular Reactors / Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A13558
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) project is being conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to demonstrate the technical and licensing viability of high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) technology as a CO2 emission-free source of energy to displace the use of natural gas, petroleum, and coal for production of electricity and/or high-temperature process energy for a wide range of industrial applications. The DOE selected the HTGR as the reactor type for the NGNP project primarily because HTGRs can produce heat energy at much higher temperatures than other reactor types due to their use of ceramic, coated-particle fuel, helium coolant, and graphite as the core structural material. The DOE is considering a number of candidate HTGR designs for the NGNP demonstration plant; the DOE or a DOE-industry partnership will ultimately select the design to be licensed and constructed.The HTGR design option being advanced by General Atomics for the NGNP demonstration plant, and for follow-on commercial deployment, is the Steam Cycle Modular Helium Reactor (SC-MHR). The SC-MHR, which is the subject of this paper, uses fuel elements in the form of hexagonal blocks, which are stacked together to form the reactor core. This type of HTGR is referred to as a prismatic HTGR, as opposed to a pebble bed HTGR, which uses billiard ball-size spherical fuel elements. The above-noted generic features of HTGRs coupled with the modular helium reactor design features of the SC-MHR allow for adequate removal of residual heat from the reactor by completely passive means in the event of a loss of forced cooling or loss of coolant pressure. This ensures that the fuel remains below time-at-temperature limits at which fuel damage could occur during such events, thereby ensuring radionuclide retention within the fuel particles. Thus, the safety of the SC-MHR (as well as other modular HTGR designs) is inherent to the design, and the rare, but severe, accidents postulated for light water reactors and other advanced nuclear concepts are not possible with the SC-MHR.It is anticipated that design, licensing, and construction of the SC-MHR demonstration plant could potentially be completed to enable plant operations to begin in 2022.