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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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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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.
U. B. Phathanapirom, E. A. Schneider
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 182 | Number 4 | April 2016 | Pages 502-522
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE15-25
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper introduces a new methodology for explicitly incorporating uncertainties in key parameters into decision making regarding the transition between various nuclear fuel cycles. These key uncertainties—in demand growth rates, technology availability, and technology costs, among others—are unlikely to be resolved for several decades and invalidate the concept of planning for a unique optimal transition strategy. Past time-dependent analyses of the nuclear fuel cycle have confronted uncertainties by using a scenario-based approach where key variables are parametrically varied, which gives rise to inflexible courses of action associated with optima for each scenario. Instead, this work selects hedging strategies through a decision making under uncertainty framework. These strategies are found by applying a choice criterion to select courses of action that mitigate regrets. These regrets are calculated by evaluating the performance of all possible transition strategies for every feasible outcome of the uncertain parameter(s). The methodology is applied to a case study involving transition from the current once-through light water reactor fuel cycle to one relying on continuous recycle in fast reactors, and the effect of choice criterion is explored. Hedging strategies are found that preserve significant flexibility to allow alteration of the fuel cycle strategy once these uncertainties are resolved. This work may provide guidance for agent-based, behavioral modeling in fuel cycle simulators as well as decision making in real-world applications.