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Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
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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
Strontium: Supply-and-demand success for the DOE’s Isotope Program
The Department of Energy’s Isotope Program (DOE IP) announced last week that it would end its “active standby” capability for strontium-82 production about two decades after beginning production of the isotope for cardiac diagnostic imaging. The DOE IP is celebrating commercialization of the Sr-82 supply chain as “a success story for both industry and the DOE IP.” Now that the Sr-82 market is commercially viable, the DOE IP and its National Isotope Development Center can “reassign those dedicated radioisotope production capacities to other mission needs”—including Sr-89.
Phillip M. Gorman, Jasmina L. Vujic, Ehud Greenspan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 191 | Number 3 | September 2015 | Pages 282-294
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-106
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study searches for the optimal fuel assembly design for the RBWR-Th core, which is a reduced-moderation boiling water reactor that is fuel-self-sustaining. Except for the initial fuel loading, it is charged with only fertile fuel and discharges only fission products, recycling all actinides. The RBWR-Th is a variant of the RBWR-AC core proposed by Hitachi, which arranges its fuel in a hexagonal tight lattice, has a high outlet void fraction, axially segregates seed and blanket regions, and fits within the advanced boiling water reactor (ABWR) pressure vessel. The RBWR-Th shares these characteristics but replaces depleted uranium (DU) with thoria as the primary fertile fuel, eliminates the internal blanket while elongating the seed region, and eliminates absorbers from the axial reflectors.
The sensitivity of important RBWR-Th core performance parameters to change in each one of a dozen design variables was established. These sensitivities provide useful insight and guidance to search for the optimal core design. The design variables of the sensitivity studies include the length of the seed and blanket zones, fuel rod diameter, lattice pitch, number of pins per assembly, concentration distribution of the recycled transfertile (transuranium + transthorium) isotopes in the seed, amount of DU in the seed makeup, coolant mass flow rate, and simulated depletion cycle length. The performance of the RBWR-Th core was found to be highly sensitive to the pitch-to-diameter ratio and to modeling assumptions. Using the conservative modeling assumptions, it was not possible to get the full ABWR power level without exceeding the pressure drop constraint.