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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
April 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
February 2024
Latest News
Can hydrogen be the transportation fuel in an otherwise nuclear economy?
Let’s face it: The global economy should be powered primarily by nuclear power. And it probably will by the end of this century, with a still-significant assist from renewables and hydro. Once nuclear systems are dominant, the costs come down to where gas is now; and when carbon emissions are reduced to a small portion of their present state, it will become obvious that most other sources are only good in niche settings. I mean, why use small modular reactors to load-follow when they can just produce that power instead of buffering it?
Koroush Shirvan, Mujid Kazimi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 184 | Number 3 | December 2013 | Pages 261-273
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A24984
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Increasing the economic competitiveness of nuclear energy is vital to its future. One way to reduce the cost of the plant is by extracting more power from the same volume. A scoping study is conducted to maximize the power density in boiling water reactors (BWRs) under the constraints of using fuel with traditional materials and cylindrical geometry, and enrichments below 5% to enable its licensability with no changes to present facilities. An optimization search over all other design parameters yields a BWR with high power density (BWR-HD) at a power level of 5000 MW(thermal), equivalent to a 26% uprated Advanced BWR (ABWR), the most recently built version of BWR. The BWR-HD utilizes about the same number of wider fuel assemblies, with 16 × 16 pin arrays and 35% shorter active fuel than the 10 × 10 assemblies of the ABWR. The fuel rod diameter and pitch are also reduced to just over 70% of the ABWR values. Thus, it is possible to increase the power density and specific power by 65% while maintaining the nominal ABWR minimum critical power ratio margin. The optimum core pressure is found to be the same as the current 7.2 MPa. The core exit quality is increased to 19% from the ABWR nominal exit quality of 15%. The pin linear heat generation rate is 20% lower, and the core pressure drop and mass of uranium are 30% lower. The BWR-HD's fuel, modeled with FRAPCON 3.4, showed similar performance to the ABWR pin design. This results in 20% reduced operations and maintenance and capital costs per unit energy, but total fuel cycle cost similar to that of the 18-month ABWR fuel cycle.