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Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
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2027 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
October 31–November 4, 2027
Washington, DC|The Westin Washington, DC 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
Supreme Court rules against Texas in interim storage case
The Supreme Court voted 6–3 against Texas and a group of landowners today in a case involving the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing of a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, reversing a decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to grant the state and landowners Fasken Land and Minerals (Fasken) standing to challenge the license.
Kodai Fukuda, Jun Nishiyama, Toru Obara
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 195 | Number 5 | May 2021 | Pages 453-463
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2020.1847979
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To proceed with the decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, analyses of unexpected fuel debris criticality accidents are needed. Supercritical transient analyses have been conducted for fuel debris using the Multiregion Integral Kinetic (MIK) code, which can take the space dependence of fuel debris into account. In those analyses, reactivity is assumed as stepwise insertion because the MIK code does not include delayed neutron effects, which might be negligible. However, reactivity insertion may not always be stepwise. Therefore, it is important to clarify an applicable range of the MIK code for nonstepwise insertion, such as ramp reactivity insertion. To show that kinetics codes without delayed neutron effects could be applied for a supercritical transient induced by ramp reactivity insertion, we established a method to clarify its applicable range. An analysis using the point reactor kinetics model was introduced as a pre-analysis to clarify this range in the case of ramp reactivity insertion in terms of the contribution of delayed neutrons. We applied the methodology to a simple cylindrical fuel debris system and successfully demonstrated a supercritical transient analysis for ramp reactivity insertion using the MIK code.