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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
A. Gruel, P. Leconte, D. Bernard, P. Archier, G. Noguère
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 169 | Number 3 | November 2011 | Pages 229-244
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE10-113
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To take into account the reactivity loss in spent fuels, an experimental program was set up in 1993 at CEA-Cadarache, France, oscillating separated fission products (FPs) in the MINERVE reactor. Reactivity worth measurements of small samples allow the extraction of information about nuclear data of the studied isotopes. A fully validated calculation scheme has been implemented to interpret pile-oscillation measurements. Therefore, calculation over experiment ratios can be accurately transposed to trends in the integral capture cross section of the FPs. With the European JEFF3.1.1 library, results show a discrepancy below 3% for several nuclides: 155Gd, 149, 152Sm, 143Nd, and 95Mo, but improvements may be needed for some others: 133Cs, 103Rh, 99Ru, and 153Eu. Based on the Integral Data Assimilation technique, we propose new thermal cross-section values, (348 ± 14) b and (42 478 ± 1793) b, for two of the most absorbing nuclides, 143Nd and 149Sm, respectively.