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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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Nuclear Technology
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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
N. E. Stauff, L. Buiron, B. Fontaine, G. Rimpault
Nuclear Technology | Volume 181 | Number 2 | February 2013 | Pages 241-250
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A15781
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs) remain the favorite candidate in France for a Generation IV (Gen IV) reactor fleet to be deployed within this century. Compared with earlier generations (Phénix, Superphénix, and European fast reactor), Gen IV SFRs require attractive economics together with enhanced safety and nonproliferation criteria. An innovative approach named Mathematical Estimation of Transients for Reactor design Orientation (METRO) has been developed with the objective of taking into account both SFR core economic performance and SFR transient incident behavior at an early stage of the core design process. Loss-of-flow, loss-of-heat-sink, and overpower transients are evaluated. Simplified modeling of transients has been developed and benchmarked against reference calculations with satisfactory results. The METRO approach to assessing the efficiency of design orientations is described in the following and applied to a carbide-fueled reactor core.
