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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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Proving DRACO will deliver
The United States is now closer than it has been in over five decades to launching the first nuclear thermal rocket into space, thanks to DRACO—the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Orbit.
Joonhong Ahn
Nuclear Technology | Volume 117 | Number 3 | March 1997 | Pages 316-328
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35346
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Redistribution of vitrified weapons-grade plutonium placed in the proposed Yucca Mountain repository is investigated based on the pure-colloid transport model for plutonium and the pure-solute transport model for plutonium, uranium, and boron. In the pure-colloid model, colloids carrying plutonium are assumed to settle out of groundwater in the fractures by floccu-lation. In the pure-solute model, 239Pu, 235U, and boron are transported through fractures by advection and diffuse into the rock matrix with sorption retardation. Both models show that 239Pu stays in the vicinity of the repository and decays there to 235U. All the 239Pu that originally exists in the repository reaches the bottom end of 200-m fractures as 235U. Boron spreads in the geologic medium during the glass leaching period and quickly disappears after the end of the leach time. Concentrations of 239Pu and 235U are found to be too small for autocatalytic criticality.