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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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No impact from Savannah River radioactive wasps
The news is abuzz with recent news stories about four radioactive wasp nests found at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The site has been undergoing cleanup operations since the 1990s related to the production of plutonium and tritium for defense purposes during the Cold War. Cleanup activities are expected to continue into the 2060s.
H. Gerwin, W. Scherer
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 97 | Number 1 | September 1987 | Pages 9-19
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE87-A23491
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A simple method has been developed for treating large cylindrical empty and rodded void regions in high-temperature gas-cooled reactors with each existing diffusion code. The cavity is treated as a diffusion region with zero reaction cross sections. Only diffusion constants, found by an optimization process, are used. Verification of this model is done by comparing results with transport solutions for identical problems. Very good agreement is attained when anisotropic diffusion is foreseen in the diffusion code. Even with isotropic diffusion, however, eigenvalues and rod reactivities proved to be acceptable. This treatment yields usual diffusion running times and allows three-dimensional calculations.