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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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.
G. Kessler
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 155 | Number 1 | January 2007 | Pages 53-73
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE07-A2644
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper analyzes whether reactor plutonium after denaturing by increasing its isotopic content of 238Pu to 6 to 8% can be regarded as proliferation resistant. In this case the utilization of such denatured reactor plutonium would become unsuitable for a nuclear explosive device (NED) because the high-explosive lenses surrounding the plutonium would melt or their elevated temperature would lead to self-ignition. Eight different plutonium isotopic mixtures with increasing 238Pu content are analyzed, and their critical masses if surrounded by a 5-cm-thick reflector of natural uranium are determined. This allows calculation of the alpha-particle heat power generated in the plutonium sphere by 238Pu and other plutonium isotopes. Then, three levels of technology with regard to the size of such hypothetical NEDs (HNEDs) and the technological level of high explosives are defined. On the basis of material data available in the open scientific literature, the radial temperature profiles in such HNEDs of an assumed configuration are calculated, and it is found that for low-technology HNEDs the limiting temperatures are exceeded for a 238Pu content of 1.6%. For high-technology HNEDs these limiting temperatures are exceeded for a 238Pu content above ~6% or somewhat more. Such denatured plutonium can be considered as proliferation resistant, similarly as uranium with <20% 235U or <12% 233U.