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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
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.
Tunc Aldemir, Giancarlo Torri, Marzio Marseguerra, Enrico Zio, Jeffrey A. Borkowski
Nuclear Technology | Volume 143 | Number 3 | September 2003 | Pages 247-255
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3414
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Estimation of xenon concentration at a given time instant is usually a difficult problem since the initial conditions are often unknown as well as a number of the model parameters. The feasibility of obtaining the model parameters of a point reactor xenon evolution model with genetic algorithms (GAs) has been investigated earlier using data obtained from a point reactor model under assumed conditions. Actual operational data from The Ohio State University Research Reactor (OSURR) and simulated operational data from the Oconee plant are used to extend this earlier work. It is shown that the point reactor model, joined with an efficient GA parameter estimation procedure, can be used for accurate prediction of global xenon evolution in small reactors (e.g., OSURR). It is also shown that this approach yields just qualitatively correct results in large reactors (e.g., Oconee) where spatial effects become significant. By continuously updating the model parameters obtained by GAs, xenon induced reactivity during transients can be estimated purely from the past reactivity and power data without a knowledge of initial conditions for 135Xe and 135I.