ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
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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
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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February 2024
Latest News
Kentucky legislature sends nuclear bills to governor
Kentucky’s Republican-majority legislature passed a bill this past week that could bring nuclear energy to the “coal-is-king” state as lawmakers broadly seek solutions to reduce carbon emissions. The bill went to Democratic Gov. Andrew Beshear on Monday for final approval.
Hoang Hai Nguyen, Jun Nishiyama, Toru Obara
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 12 | December 2020 | Pages 1128-1142
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2020.1775433
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The CANDLE (Constant Axial shape of Neutron flux, nuclide densities and power shape During Life of Energy production) reactor concept was proposed to overcome the disadvantages of current reactor technologies. In this study, a Monte Carlo–based procedure is developed for quantitative comparison of burnup performance and neutronic characteristics between lead bismuth eutectic (LBE)–cooled and sodium-cooled CANDLE reactors to demonstrate the possibility of using sodium coolant in a small CANDLE burning reactor. In this procedure, a neutron transport equation is solved using the MVP code with the JENDL-4.0 library, and the burnup calculation is solved using the MVP-BURN code with the detailed burnup chain. To simulate the fuel-shuffling process, an auxiliary code was developed using Python. The results show that for the same fuel pin design and core volume, changing the coolant from LBE to sodium reduced the keff by 2.3% and the average discharge burnup by 15.6%, due to the softer neutron spectrum and larger neutron leakage fraction. It would be necessary to increase the fuel volume and core radius approximately 38% and 17%, respectively, for criticality in a sodium-cooled CANDLE core.