ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Meeting Spotlight
Utility Working Conference Virtual Summit (UWC)
August 11, 2020
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Aug 2020
Jan 2020
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
July 2020
Nuclear Technology
August 2020
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Penfield and Enos: Outage planning in the COVID-19 era
Penfield
Enos
Energy Harbor’s Beaver Valley plant, located about 34 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, Pa., was one of many nuclear sites preparing for a scheduled outage as the coronavirus pandemic intensified in March. The baseline objective of any planned outage—to complete refueling on time and get back to producing power—was complicated by the need to prevent the transmission of COVID-19.
While over 200 of the plant’s 850 staff members worked from home to support the outage, about 800 contractors were brought in for jobs that could only be done on-site. Nuclear News Staff Writer Susan Gallier talked with Beaver Valley Site Vice President Rod Penfield and General Plant Manager Matt Enos about the planning and communication required.
Beaver Valley can look forward to several more outages in the future, now that plans to shut down the two Westinghouse pressurized water reactors, each rated at about 960 MWe, were reversed in March. “The deactivation announcement happened in the middle of all our planning,” Enos said. “It’s a shame we haven’t had a chance to get together as a large group and celebrate that yet.”
While the focus remains on safe pandemic operations, the site now has two causes for celebration: an outage success and a long future ahead.
Masahiro Tanaka, Sadatsugu Takayama, Saburo Sano
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 3 | April 2015 | Pages 604-607
Proceedings of TRITIUM 2013 | dx.doi.org/10.13182/FST14-T90
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Microwave irradiation was conducted for the effective regeneration process of a synthetic honeycomb type 5A zeolite adsorbent in a single-mode microwave cavity at 2.46 GHz. To investigate the effect of electromagnetic fields, inductive heating by a magnetic field was applied to synthetic zeolite containing water. Because the microwave energy absorbed in the sample was less than 15 W, the zeolite sample was only heated to a temperature of 71 °C. Water desorption was observed based on the increased temperature of the zeolite sample and the thermogravimetric curve that indicated a single step phenomenon. As a result, the regeneration process of zeolite was not complete over a period of 6000 s. A comparison of dielectric heating by an electric field with inductive heating by a magnetic field showed that the regeneration process by microwave irradiation was particularly beneficial in dielectric heating.
