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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
Meeting Spotlight
Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS 2023)
May 7–11, 2023
Idaho Falls, ID|Snake River Event Center
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
The blossoming of cooperation between the U.S. and Canada
The United States and Canadian nuclear industries used to be an example of how two independent teams of engineers facing an identical problem—making electricity from uranium—could come up with completely different answers. In the 1950s, Canada began designing a reactor with tubes, heavy water, and natural uranium, while in the U.S. it was big pots of light water and enriched uranium.
But 80 years later, there is a remarkable convergence. The North American push for a new generation of nuclear reactors, mostly small modular reactors (SMRs), is becoming binational, with U.S. and Canadian companies seeking markets and regulatory certification on both sides of the border and in many cases sourcing key components in the other country.
Deokjung Lee, Joel Rhodes, Kord Smith
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 174 | Number 1 | May 2013 | Pages 79-86
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE12-20
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The huge absorption cross sections of 155Gd and 157Gd cause strong spatial shielding effects in Gd-bearing pins. A high-order depletion method has been developed for CASMO-5 to address the issue of the small depletion steps typically required for Gd-bearing fuel assemblies. In this method, the microscopic absorption reaction rates of gadolinium isotopes are assumed to be quadratic functions of the number density of 155Gd rather than the constant reaction rate assumption in the conventional predictor-corrector (PC) method. This quadratic function assumption models the variations of the spatial shielding effects over the depletion step and therefore improves the accuracy of depletion calculations with a negligible amount of calculation time increase. With this new method, a depletion step size four times larger than the step size used in a conventional PC method can be used for Gd-bearing assemblies without compromising accuracy.
