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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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Trinity Test at 80: American Nuclear Society CEO Craig Piercy reflects on the Manhattan Project
By Craig H. Piercy, CEO and Executive Director of the American Nuclear Society
Eighty years ago today, at exactly 5:29:45 a.m. local time* on July 16, 1945, the United States Army detonated the world’s first nuclear bomb in the Jornada del Muerto desert of southern New Mexico. The searing flash and thunderous shockwave marked the culmination of the Manhattan Project, a secret, three-year national effort to harness nuclear fission and hasten the end of the Second World War.
The Trinity test, overseen by Manhattan Project director Major General Leslie Groves and Los Alamos Laboratory director Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, was the final act of that race to build the atomic bomb. Hoisted atop a 100-foot steel tower, the plutonium implosion device, known as the Gadget, unleashed a blast equal to 21,000 tons of TNT and temperatures hotter than the center of the Sun.
From ten miles away, observers wearing darkened welder goggles, looked on in stunned silence. “We knew the world would not be the same,” recalled Oppenheimer.
Do Heon Kim, Hangbok Choi, Won Sik Yang, Jong Kyung Kim
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 137 | Number 1 | January 2001 | Pages 23-37
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE01-A2173
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effect of DUPIC fuel composition heterogeneity on CANDU core performance was assessed for three candidate DUPIC fuel options: the fissile content adjustment method, reactivity control by slightly enriched and depleted uranium, and reactivity control by natural uranium. The fissile content adjustment method produces DUPIC fuel of fixed 235U and 239Pu contents, while the reactivity control method produces DUPIC fuel of uniform reactivity at the fresh condition. To assess the uncertainty of the core performance parameter associated with the isotopic variation, the sensitivity coefficients were generated by the generalized perturbation theory for the lattice parameter and zone controller level perturbations. The uncertainty was then estimated for three key core performance parameters: maximum channel power (MCP), maximum bundle power (MBP), and channel power peaking factor (CPPF). The fissile content adjustment method was shown to have a smaller uncertainty in the core performance parameter than with the reactivity control options. For the fissile content adjustment method, the average uncertainties of MCP, MBP, and CPPF were estimated to be 1.3, 2.5, and 1.2%, respectively, with 95% confidence level, when simulated for specified burnup points of the equilibrium core.