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NN Asks: Is the U.S. ready for nuclear construction to accelerate?
Craig Stover
Yes, but . . .
The United States is better positioned today for nuclear construction than it has been in decades. Some of that comes from the experience gained at Vogtle and V.C. Summer. I was part of the team that helped start the V.C. Summer project in 2008, and at that time we were trying to build a nuclear construction workforce from scratch. We learned a lot through that effort, and many of those lessons learned have since been studied, documented, and shared.
The nuclear industry is also benefiting from the wave of investment that started growing around 2020. Over the last five or six years, there has been a serious effort across the country to get ready for new nuclear builds. The U.S. government and the private sector are investing billions of dollars in new nuclear. Much of that work is happening before widespread commercial deployment contracts are signed. This is real, and we need to prepare.
Y. Danon, R. C. Block, M. J. Rapp, F. J. Saglime, G. Leinweber, D. P. Barry, N. J. Drindak, J. G. Hoole
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 161 | Number 3 | March 2009 | Pages 321-330
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE161-321
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents new measurements of the carbon and beryllium neutron total cross section in the energy range of 24 to 950 keV. The measurements were done using a pulsed neutron source driven by an electron LINAC. The neutron beam passed through a 30-cm-thick iron filter, which results in neutron transmission only in energies where resonance scattering and potential interference exist. The neutron filter removes most of the neutrons at other energies and significantly attenuates the gamma background resulting in 20 energy windows and a high signal-to-background ratio. The filtered beam was used for transmission measurements through graphite that results in ~1% accurate total cross sections that are in excellent agreement with current evaluations. The carbon measurement provides a verification of the accuracy of the filtered beam method. Measurements of three samples of different thicknesses of beryllium resulted in accurate total cross-section values that agree with one previous measurement and show discrepancies from current evaluations. The high accuracy of the new measurements can be used for improvement of future total cross-section evaluations of beryllium.