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Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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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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Latest News
WIPP improves utility shaft safety, begins infrastructure project
Harrison Western Shaft Sinkers (HWSS), the company drilling a new utility shaft at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, has retained a safety culture expert following a near-miss accident in the shaft late last year. The safety expert will conduct monthly facilitated discussions with crews working on the shaft to reinforce expectations for identifying concerns regarding unsafe circumstances, according to a recent report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
Robert P. Martin, Simone H. Morgan, Christopher Cragg
Nuclear Technology | Volume 193 | Number 1 | January 2016 | Pages 200-212
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the RELAP5-3D Computer Code | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-140
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Evaluation methodologies are under development at BWX Technologies (BWXT) to support licensure of the BWXT small modular reactor. In these evaluation methodologies, RELAP5-3D is being used as the computation engine for reactor coolant system performance. To facilitate analyses, the RelapManager code was developed as a Windows-based graphical user interface for RELAP5-3D. It is used to edit RELAP5-3D input models and develop simulation suites with unique attention to the preparation of Quality Program records required per 10 CFR 50 Appendix B. The software has been created with Visual Studio employing the .NET integrated development environment. The programming focal point for RelapManager is an XML schema that captures the modeling rules inherent in RELAP5-3D. It transforms an existing input model into XML, which, through a large library of functions created to support XML file types, provides a rich user experience capable of improving productivity and quality.
RelapManager includes specialized features for the preparation of uncertainty and sensitivity/importance analyses, execution on a remote server, plotting, and data checking against the modeling rules. As a demonstration of these features, an uncertainty and importance analysis has been prepared using the “Typical PWR” test problem provided with the nominal RELAP5-3D release package. RelapManager takes as input uncertainty models characterizing the expected domain of model parameter variability. Subsequently, a calculation suite derived from sampling the uncertainty domain is described, and a run script is prepared by RelapManager. Figure of merit results are gathered by RelapManager and analyzed using a variance-based sensitivity analysis method.