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Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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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.
Olugbenga O. Noah, Johan F. Slabber, Josua P. Meyer
Nuclear Technology | Volume 193 | Number 3 | March 2016 | Pages 375-390
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-56
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Natural convection heat transfer in fluid-saturated porous media has in recent years gained considerable attention especially in high-temperature reactors. It is proposed in this study that light water reactors (LWRs) can be made safer by redesigning the fuel in the fuel assembly. The proposed design is aimed at increasing the safety level in LWRs by the use of fuel in the form of loose coated particles in a helium environment inside the nuclear fuel cladding tubes of the fuel elements. The coated particle fuel being a heat source forms a bed in the cladding tube closed at both ends, the heat from the particles is transferred to the gas in the tube, and the gas movement is due to natural convection. In this study, we investigate the heat transfer characteristics inside a cladding tube containing packed beds of spherical particles by simulating a porous region whose medium properties are defined; that is, the geometrical model representing the packed bed is specified as a porous region. The finite volume method was used in solving the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation while the heat transfer coefficient h and the dimensionless numbers such as Ra = f(Gr, Pr) and Nu are used in analyzing the results. Simulated results from this investigation were validated with experimental results. The discrepancy in the results may be due to uncertainties, experimental errors, numerical errors, and the consequence of the lump parameter effect in the porous region modeling approach. This approach may be considered a unique means of estimating heat transfer characteristics in porous media.