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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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Latest News
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Soo-Yong Park, Young-Ho Jin, Yong-Mann Song
Nuclear Technology | Volume 158 | Number 1 | April 2007 | Pages 109-115
Technical Note | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3829
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An external reactor vessel cooling as a means for an in-vessel retention has been selected as one of the tentative severe accident management strategies for the Wolsong plants, which are typical CANDU 6 reactors. The strategy takes advantage of the plant-specific features: (a) the power density is low, (b) the calandria vessel and the calandria vault have large water volumes, (c) the calandria is always submerged in the water of the calandria vault during a normal operation, (d) the stainless steel layer of the molten corium is negligible even though the unoxidized Zircaloy could form a metal layer, (e) no insulation structure is designed around the calandria vessel, (f) the bottom area of the calandria is large enough to transfer a sufficient amount of the corium decay heat into the calandria vault water, and (g) the water supply from the backup water sources into the calandria vault is available for a long-term external cooling of the calandria. The above design features cause a severe accident progression to be considerably delayed, and they minimize the in-vessel retention issues applied to a certain pressurized light water reactor. Furthermore, the thermal analysis demonstrates that the molten corium on the bottom of the calandria is externally coolable in terms of the critical heat flux, although phenomenological uncertainties still exist. This paper shows the feasibility and the evaluation results of the in-vessel retention strategy via an external vessel cooling for the CANDU 6-type plants, which have not been addressed as yet.