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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Meeting Spotlight
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
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.
Daisuke Kawasaki, Joonhong Ahn, Chang-Lak Kim, Jin-Beak Park
Nuclear Technology | Volume 154 | Number 3 | June 2006 | Pages 374-388
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3741
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The release of radionuclides from the conceptual low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste (LILW) repository in Korea is analyzed by establishing a multicompartment model. The model takes into account the vault-array configuration consisting of multiple waste types, multimember radioactive decay chains, and radionuclide transport through the water-unsaturated regions and water-saturated aquifer. Observations of the repository performance have been made with the radiological exposure dose rates and with the radiotoxicities in the environment.Numerical results show that, among all the radionuclides in the waste, 129I is the predominant contributor to the overall peak exposure dose rate. The peak exposure dose rate of 129I can be affected by a migration distance in the geosphere and the vault-array configuration. Reducing the initial inventory of 129I stored in the waste vaults or spreading its release over a longer time period by modification of the engineered barrier system would effectively reduce the exposure dose rate because the release rate of 129I from the repository is reduced.The total radiotoxicity in the environment is dominated by 129I at early times and by 238U and its daughters after 106 yr. Because of the long half-lives of these nuclides, the radiotoxicity in the environment is insensitive to the vault-array configuration or to the transport distance in the geosphere.