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Conference Spotlight
2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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
Modernizing I&C for operations and maintenance, one phase at a time
The two reactors at Dominion Energy’s Surry plant are among the oldest in the U.S. nuclear fleet. Yet when the plant celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023, staff could raise a toast to the future. Surry was one of the first plants to file a subsequent license renewal (SLR) application, and in May 2021, it became official: the plant was licensed to operate for a full 80 years, extending its reactors’ lifespans into 2052 and 2053.
Andrew Holcomb, Luiz Leal, Farzad Rahnema, Dorothea Wiarda
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 186 | Number 2 | May 2017 | Pages 147-155
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2016.1273632
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new method for constructing probability tables in the unresolved resonance region (URR) has been developed. This new methodology is an extensive modification of the single-level Breit-Wigner (SLBW) pseudo-resonance pair sequence method commonly used to generate probability tables in the URR. The new method uses a Monte Carlo process to generate many pseudo-resonance sequences by first sampling the average resonance parameter data in the URR and then converting the sampled resonance parameters to the more robust R-matrix limited (RML) format. For each sampled set of pseudo-resonance sequences, the temperature-dependent cross sections are reconstructed on a small grid around the energy of reference using the Reich-Moore formalism and the Leal-Hwang Doppler broadening methodology. The effective cross sections calculated at the energies of reference are then used to construct probability tables in the URR. The RML cross-section reconstruction algorithm has been rigorously tested for a variety of isotopes, including 16O, 19F, 35Cl, 56Fe, 63Cu, and 65Cu. The new URR method also produced normalized cross-section factor probability tables for 238U that were found to be in agreement with current standards. The modified 238U probability tables were shown to produce keff results in excellent agreement with several standard benchmarks, including the IEUMET- FAST-007 (BIG TEN), IEU-MET-FAST-003, and IEU-COMP-FAST-004 benchmarks.
