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Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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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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First concrete marks start of safety-related construction for Hermes test reactor
Kairos Power announced this morning that safety-related nuclear construction has begun at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., site where the company is building its Hermes low-power test reactor. Hermes, a scaled demonstration of Kairos Power’s fluoride salt–cooled, high-temperature reactor technology, became the first non–light water reactor to receive a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 2023. The company broke ground at the site in July 2024.
J. T. Birkholzer, N. Halecky, S. W. Webb, P. F. Peterson, G. S. Bodvarsson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 163 | Number 1 | July 2008 | Pages 147-164
Technical Paper | High-Level Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3978
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In heated drifts such as those designated for emplacement of radioactive waste at the proposed geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, temperature gradients cause natural-convection processes that may significantly influence the moisture conditions in the drifts and in the surrounding fractured rock. Large-scale convection cells in the heated drifts would provide an effective mechanism for turbulent mixing and axial transport of vapor generated from evaporation of pore water in the nearby formation. As a result, vapor would be transported from the elevated-temperature sections of the drifts into cool end sections (where no waste is emplaced), would condense there, and subsequently would drain into underlying rock units. To study these processes, we have developed a new simulation method that couples existing tools for simulating thermal-hydrological conditions in the fractured formation with a module that approximates turbulent natural convection in heated emplacement drifts. The new method simultaneously handles (a) the flow and energy transport processes in the fractured rock, (b) the flow and energy transport processes in the cavity, and (c) the heat and mass exchange at the rock-cavity interface. An application is presented studying the future thermal-hydrological conditions within and near a representative waste emplacement drift at Yucca Mountain. Particular focus is on the potential for condensation along the emplacement section, a possible result of heat output differences between individual waste packages.