ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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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
2027 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
October 31–November 4, 2027
Washington, DC|The Westin Washington, DC Downtown
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
Drones fly in to inspect waste tanks at Savannah River Site
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management will soon, for the first time, begin using drones to internally inspect radioactive liquid waste tanks at the department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Inspections were previously done using magnetic wall-crawling robots.
Odmaa Sambuu, Toru Obara
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 177 | Number 1 | May 2014 | Pages 97-110
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-22
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the past decade, greater emphasis has been placed in nuclear reactor design on passive systems for the removal of decay heat. This study focuses on the passive safety feature of decay heat removal in modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs). The availability of this feature depends largely on reactor dimensions, power, and initial core temperature. It is assumed that the initial temperatures of fuel, graphite matrix, and coolant are the same, and so are represented by the initial core temperature, which is uniformly distributed throughout the core. However, little is known in general about the relationships among the parameters mentioned above or on the ability of the core to passively reject decay heat. To obtain a general understanding of the relationship of those parameters in HTGRs, analyses were performed, estimating the effects of initial core and soil temperatures and of the presence of structural materials on the maximum core temperature, allowable power, and size. Appropriate sizes were evaluated for reactors with given powers having various maximum power densities and operating at different initial core temperatures. Criticality and burnup analyses for the proposed reactors were performed, and it was found that all reactors with 20 wt% of uranium enrichment can be critical for over 16 years of operation.