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Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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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
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.
G. L. Beausoleil, II, G. L. Povirk, B. J. Curnutt
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 3 | March 2020 | Pages 444-457
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1631052
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) has been used successfully for the testing of fast reactor fuel for nearly two decades. These successes have been in spite of numerous challenges for testing fast reactor fuel in the ATR (a thermal spectrum reactor), but the solutions to those challenges have resulted in excessively long irradiation times (~10 years) for high-burnup targets as well as experiments that are highly sensitive to fabrication tolerances and eccentricities. This paper presents a solution to the problems of extended irradiation times and fabrication sensitivities. Thermal and neutronic analyses were performed to show that a reduced-diameter fuel pin with an equivalent linear heat generation rate can provide a prototypic thermal profile (peak centerline and inner clad temperature) along with a near-prototypic power profile within the ATR thermal spectrum. This allows the experiment to reach a high burnup in an expeditious timeframe compared to traditional ATR fast fuel irradiations. In addition, problems with fabrication sensitivities were addressed by introducing a double-encapsulated experiment that pushes the high heat flux helium gap farther away from the fuel pin. Fuel pin position eccentricities are also mitigated by using a large sodium bond between the pin and capsule fuel. The advantages and potential pitfalls of this revised design are discussed, including the effect of length scales on fuel system behavior.