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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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Sep 2025
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Optimizing nuclear plant outages: Data analytics tools and methods for enhancing resilience and efficiency
Nuclear power plant refueling outages are among the most complex phases in a plant’s operational cycle.1 During these outages, tens of thousands of activities, including maintenance and surveillance, are conducted simultaneously within a short timeframe. Typically lasting three to four weeks, these operations involve large crews of contractors with diverse skill sets performing tasks ranging from testing and surveillance to maintenance. Outages may extend longer if major backfitting or modernization projects are planned. Consequently, plant outages are expensive, incurring significant operational costs, such as contractor labor and equipment, as well as the loss of generation while the plant is off line. This can easily cost a plant operator more than $1 million a day. Therefore, there is a constant need to mitigate the economic impact on plants by reducing the frequency, duration, and risks associated with these outages.2,3
Technical Session|FCWMD
Tuesday, October 7, 2025|8:00–9:40AM CDT|Salon A
Session Chair:
Zeses E. Karoutas
Co-Chair:
Christopher Van Wert
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An Experimental and Theoretical Study of Fission Gas Kr Speciation in Spent Nuclear Fuel by X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy and First-Principles Calculations
8:00–8:25AM CDT
Goutam Kuri (Paul Scherrer Institute), Johannes Bertsch (Paul Scherrer Institute)
Paper
A Microstructurally Informed Model of High Burnup Structure in UO2 Fuel
8:25–8:50AM CDT
W. Cade Brinkley (Univ. Tennessee, Knoxville), Lauryn Reyes (Univ. Tennessee, Knoxville), Nathan Capps (ORNL), Brian Wirth (Univ. Tennessee, Knoxville)
Lower-length-scale Informed Mechanistic Models to Predict Creep Rates in UO2 Fuel
8:50–9:15AM CDT
Conor O.T. Galvin (LANL), Anton J. Schneider (LANL), Pieterjan Robbe (Sandia), David A. Andersson (LANL), Michael W. D. Cooper (LANL)
Kinetic Impact of Irradiation Defects on Fuel Thermal Conductivity: Modelling and Uncertainty
9:15–9:40AM CDT
Antoine Boulore (CEA), Guillaume Damblin (CEA), Stéphane Bernaud (CEA)
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