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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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2021 Student Conference
April 8–10, 2021
Virtual Meeting
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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January 2021
Latest News
NC State celebrates 70 years of nuclear engineering education
An early picture of the research reactor building on the North Carolina State University campus. The Department of Nuclear Engineering is celebrating the 70th anniversary of its nuclear engineering curriculum in 2020–2021. Photo: North Carolina State University
The Department of Nuclear Engineering at North Carolina State University has spent the 2020–2021 academic year celebrating the 70th anniversary of its becoming the first U.S. university to establish a nuclear engineering curriculum. It started in 1950, when Clifford Beck, then of Oak Ridge, Tenn., obtained support from NC State’s dean of engineering, Harold Lampe, to build the nation’s first university nuclear reactor and, in conjunction, establish an educational curriculum dedicated to nuclear engineering.
The department, host to the 2021 ANS Virtual Student Conference, scheduled for April 8–10, now features 23 tenure/tenure-track faculty and three research faculty members. “What a journey for the first nuclear engineering curriculum in the nation,” said Kostadin Ivanov, professor and department head.
M. Ferrara, I. H. Hutchinson, S. M. Wolfe
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 4 | November 2009 | Pages 1476-1488
Technical Paper | dx.doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9251
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The main sources of noise and pickups in Alcator C-Mod are identified, and their effects on the measurement and control of the vertical position are evaluated. Broadband noise may affect controllability of C-Mod plasmas at limit elongations and may become an issue with high-order controllers; therefore, two applications of Kalman filters are investigated. A Kalman filter is compared to a state observer based on the pseudoinverse of the measurement matrix and proves to be a better candidate for state reconstruction for vertical stabilization, provided adequate models of the system, the inputs, the process, and measurement noise and an adequate set of diagnostic measurements are available. A single-input single-output application of the filter for the vertical observer rejects high-frequency noise without destabilizing high-elongation plasmas.
