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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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Latest News
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
W. R. Marcum, T. S. Palmer, B. G. Woods, S. T. Keller, S. R. Reese, M. R. Hartman
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 171 | Number 2 | June 2012 | Pages 150-164
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE11-25
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Oregon State TRIGA Reactor (OSTR) was converted from highly enriched uranium (HEU) Fuel Life Improvement Program (FLIP) fuel to low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel in October 2008. This effort was driven by the U.S. Department of Energy's Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactor program. The new LEU fuel is 30/20 U-Zr1.6H (30% uranium in the fuel matrix, 19.75 wt% enriched) in contrast to the FLIP fuel having U-Zr1.6H (8.5% uranium in the fuel matrix, 70 wt% enriched). This new fuel composition provides the best match in performance of the available mixture ratios when compared to the previous FLIP fuel. To support conversion, a complete assessment and reevaluation of the OSTR Safety Analysis Report was performed. This evaluation included steady-state thermal-hydraulic and neutronics characterizations of the HEU and LEU cores as well as a transient behavior (pulse) analysis of both core types.This paper presents a summary of the methods used and results produced during the pulse analysis identifying power, temperature, and reactivity during pulsed operation for the FLIP and new LEU fuel. This analysis was performed using RELAP5-3D version 2.4.2 and point reactor kinetics simulation software; these two methods are found to agree very well. We discuss the differences between the two fuels and the impact of pulse behavior on the safety limits for the converted reactor.