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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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
Kosei Hara, Francis C. Moon
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 1548-1553
Magnet Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24953
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Superconducting magnets have complex structures. The coil pack is made up of alternate layers of superconductor and insulator, which form an extremely unisotropic composite structure. For example, the MFTF magnet design, the transverse stiffness is quite soft as compared to the circumferential stiffness [1]. In this study, cylindrically wound superconducting magnets were modeled by two-dimensional multi-rings connected by soft springs, and the internal vibration and buckling of the system were studied both experimentally and analytically. Since the linear elastic theory used in the previous studies [2,3] has failed to predict buckling and vibration of internal turns in the bending mode, elastic ring theory was used in this study. A model based on ring theory and magnetic stiffness was developed to explain experimental observations and showed a fair to good agreement between experimental and theoretical values of the buckling current.
