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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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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
M. S. Tillack, D. K. Sze, M. A. Abdou
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 1088-1096
Nuclear Technology Experiments and Facilities | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24878
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The lack of experimental data for liquid metal blankets in the fusion environment restricts our ability to develop designs with demonstrated feasibility and adequately characterized performance. In order to confidently predict neutronic and thermal hydraulic performance of blankets, a variety of experiments will be needed. Ultimately, verification of all nuclear components will require testing in a fusion environment. However, a great deal of information can be obtained prior to fusion testing using non-neutron facilities to explore separate, multiple, and partially integrated effects. A large class of issues which can be effectively studied in a non-neutron environment are those impacted by MHD transport phenomena. A coordinated test program is described below to treat momentum, heat, and mass transport issues for liquid metal blankets.