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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
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
Framatome signs contracts with Sizewell C
French nuclear developer Framatome is slated to deliver key equipment for Sizewell C Ltd.’s two large reactors planned for the United Kingdom’s Suffolk coast.
The agreement, reportedly worth multiple billions of euros, was announced this week and will involve Framatome from the design phase until commissioning. The company also agreed to a long-term fuel supply deal. Framatome is 80.5 percent owned by France’s EDF and 19.5 percent owned by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
J. Wang, H. Yeom, P. Humrickhouse, K. Sridharan, M. Corradini
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 3 | March 2020 | Pages 467-477
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1649566
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Since the accident at Fukushima, one major goal of reactor safety research has been the development of accident tolerant technologies that can mitigate or delay fuel degradation during a beyond-design-basis accident. One major effort has been focused on the development of coatings for light water reactor fuel cladding. Chromium-coated zirconium-alloy clad is one of the leading options. In this work, the MELCOR systems code (version 1.8.6 User-Defined Generalized Coating) is used to evaluate the performance of Cr-coated Zr-alloy clad as compared to Zr-alloy clad and APMT FeCrAl-coated Zr-alloy clad for a pressurized water reactor (i.e., Surry) for a station blackout (SBO) accident scenario. Our focus is primarily on the accident progression behavior depending on oxidation kinetics and the assumed failure criterion for the coated cladding material. Our simulation and comparison indicate that the presence of the coating material can significantly reduce the initial rate of hydrogen generation and delay the time when hydrogen generation becomes significant. This decrease in the rate of oxidation and delay in timing can provide additional coping time for compensatory operator actions. We also note that the effect of extended auxiliary feedwater system operation (long-term SBO) can increase this additional coping time in combination with Cr-coated Zr-alloy, but it is limited by other primary system failures (e.g., hot-leg creep rupture) that will occur driven by core decay heat and independent of coated cladding effects. Finally, we observe that while the initial suppression of hydrogen generation for Cr-coated Zr-alloy clad compared to Zr-alloy is notable, the overall amount of hydrogen produced is similar since hydrogen can also be produced through competing oxidation of stainless steel components during the accident progression. Our future work is focused on the uncertainty analysis of the oxidation rate data, coating failure criteria, and severe accident modeling limitations in order to better quantify accident tolerant fuel clad benefits.