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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver 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
Sam Altman steps down as Oklo board chair
Advanced nuclear company Oklo Inc. has new leadership for its board of directors as billionaire Sam Altman is stepping down from the position he has held since 2015. The move is meant to open new partnership opportunities with OpenAI, where Altman is CEO, and other artificial intelligence companies.
Kodai Fukuda, Jun Nishiyama, Toru Obara
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 7 | July 2020 | Pages 493-507
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2020.1743580
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Transient analysis for possible prompt supercritical accidents of fuel debris in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station is quite important. However, unlike solution fuel systems, there is little knowledge about supercritical transient analysis in fuel debris systems. In particular, reactivity feedback effects, which may have a significant impact on the results of the analysis, are important and require further study. In particular, the impacts of radiolysis gas void and moderator boiling should be discussed. Thus, the purpose of this study is to clarify whether the reactivity feedback effects of radiolysis gas and boiling of the moderator impact the supercritical transient analysis in fuel debris systems. To accomplish this, we used a power profile obtained by the MIK code with the Doppler reactivity feedback effect; radiolysis gas analysis and heat transfer analysis were performed. For the radiolysis gas analysis, the AGNES2 model was modified to consider the difference between solution fuel and fuel debris systems. The heat transfer analysis used an OpenFOAM solver to perform conjugate heat transfer calculations. We found that the radiolysis gas void was negligible when probable G values, which are the generation number of molecules per absorbed energy, were used. In addition, the results showed that boiling could be also negligible under most conditions. However, we found that the boiling time may be earlier than the peak time of the power when the radius of the fuel debris particle is small. In this case, ignoring the boiling may give conservative results. These considerations should be included in future analyses.