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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS 2023)
May 7–11, 2023
Idaho Falls, ID|Snake River Event Center
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
The blossoming of cooperation between the U.S. and Canada
The United States and Canadian nuclear industries used to be an example of how two independent teams of engineers facing an identical problem—making electricity from uranium—could come up with completely different answers. In the 1950s, Canada began designing a reactor with tubes, heavy water, and natural uranium, while in the U.S. it was big pots of light water and enriched uranium.
But 80 years later, there is a remarkable convergence. The North American push for a new generation of nuclear reactors, mostly small modular reactors (SMRs), is becoming binational, with U.S. and Canadian companies seeking markets and regulatory certification on both sides of the border and in many cases sourcing key components in the other country.
C. M. Cooling, M. M. R. Williams, E. T. Nygaard, M. D. Eaton
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 177 | Number 3 | July 2014 | Pages 233-259
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-55
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Previously, a point kinetics model of the Medical Isotope Production Reactor has been presented, which included representations of instantaneous power, delayed neutron precursors, fuel solution temperature, radiolytic gas content, and coolant temperature. This model has been extended to include the effects of a vertically discretized temperature profile with a mixing of heat energy by eddies, boiling, and condensation and an extended model of bubble velocity and radius. It is found that the most striking change to the behavior of the system is caused by the effects of steam, which provides a strong negative feedback that tends to depress average powers in cases where the fuel solution temperature rises above the saturation temperature but can also lead to large, sharp power peaks through steam exiting the system (which can remove a large amount of negative reactivity in a short amount of time). The overall effect, however, does not lead to any unbounded power excursions. Possibilities for further extension of the model include the modeling of the composition of the plenum gas and the modeling of global pressure and its effects.
