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Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy
The mission of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) is to promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology while simultaneously preventing the diversion and misuse of nuclear material and technology through appropriate safeguards and security, and promotion of nuclear nonproliferation policies. To achieve this mission, the objectives of the NNPD are to: Promote policy that discourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and material to inappropriate entities. Provide information to ANS members, the technical community at large, opinion leaders, and decision makers to improve their understanding of nuclear nonproliferation issues. Become a recognized technical resource on nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and security issues. Serve as the integration and coordination body for nuclear nonproliferation activities for the ANS. Work cooperatively with other ANS divisions to achieve these objective nonproliferation policies.
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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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Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
Kyoung-Ho Kang, Rae-Joon Park, Sang-Baik Kim, Hee-Dong Kim, Soon-Heung Chang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 155 | Number 3 | September 2006 | Pages 324-339
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3765
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
External reactor vessel cooling (ERVC) is one of the major severe accident management strategies for operating nuclear power plants. Flow circulation inside the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) insulator should be effective enough to ensure sufficient heat removal via ERVC. Confirmation experiments for different configurations of the RPV insulator were performed using alumina-iron thermite melt as a corium simulant. For precise evaluations on the flow path inside the insulator, flow analyses using the RELAP5/MOD3 code were performed. Because of the limited steam venting through the insulator, steam binding occurred inside the annulus in the tests that were performed to simulate the operating conventional insulator design. This steam binding brought about incident heatup of the vessel outer surface. On the contrary, in the test that was performed to simulate the advanced design of insulator considering ERVC, sufficient water ingression and steam venting through the insulator resulted in effective cooldown of the vessel lower head characterized by nucleate boiling. The results of flow analyses using the RELAP5/MOD3 code confirmed the steam binding in case of the limited steam venting. From the current experimental results, it could be found that the proposed modification of the insulator design allowing sufficient water ingression and steam ventilation could increase the possibility of in-vessel corium retention through ERVC.