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Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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Former Exelon CEO Chris Crane remembered for “transformational milestones”
Crane
Exelon announced that Chris Crane, the company’s former chief executive, passed away on Saturday in Chicago at the age of 65.
Crane served as the company’s president and CEO from 2012 until his retirement in December 2022. During his tenure, he steered the energy company through several transformational milestones, including the successful mergers with Constellation Energy in 2012 and Pepco Holdings in 2016, creating the largest utility business by customer count in the United States.
In 2022, with the spin-off of Constellation as the generation and retail side of energy business (with the largest U.S. nuclear fleet), Crane led the creation of a stand-alone transmission and delivery energy company.
M. Gentili, B. Fontaine, G. Rimpault
Nuclear Technology | Volume 192 | Number 1 | October 2015 | Pages 11-24
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-123
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fast reactor designs are currently being revisited aiming at having a consolidated safety dossier. In that frame, studying any perturbation of nominal operating condition is mandatory.
Among different initiators, particular attention is being paid to reactivity insertion due to core assembly bowing and deformation and induced lattice readjustments as a consequence of events such as earthquakes.
In this study, a deterministic calculation scheme based on the mesh projection method has been used in order to evaluate the reactivity changes occurring in a deformed sodium fast reactor core.
With the microscopic cross sections calculated by ECCO, full three-dimensional core calculations are being conducted with ERANOS (DIF3D), VARIANT, and SNATCH to solve neutron transport equations in either diffusion, nodal variational, or Sn transport approximations.
A simple analytical model based on perturbation theory has been developed to identify the main phenomena leading to changes in the core reactivity. Reactivity changes induced by small deformations can be estimated as a summation of reactivity perturbations of individual subassemblies.
The results obtained with this method have been checked by comparing them to those obtained with Monte Carlo simulations. A good agreement is being found allowing the use of this method in realistic problems with significant computer resource reduction.
The different contributions to the reactivity changes confirm the results of the analytical model.