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Conference Spotlight
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.
Karl O. Ott
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 99 | Number 1 | May 1988 | Pages 13-27
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE88-A23541
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The longer term response of oxide- and metal-fueled liquid-metal-cooled reactors to unscrammed loss-of-flow and loss-of-heat-sink failures is investigated. The investigation consists of a review of numerical transient calculations performed by the Argonne National Laboratory Reactor Analysis and Safety Division, and of analytical analyses of semiasymptotic states. The emphasis is on the identification and evaluation of an inherent shutdown state for metal fuel, with its high heat conductivity, as an alternative to the familiar low-power asymptotic critical state. Design implications for retaining the inherently effected shutdown for a sufficiently long period are discussed and quantitatively evaluated. In addition, the effect of uncertainties of reactivity coefficients on predictions for such unscrammed transients is investigated. It is shown how measurements during a preoperational safety demonstration phase can validate and possibly correct those predictions.