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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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Abd El Rahman Mahmoud, Aya Diab
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 3 | March 2022 | Pages 342-361
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2021.1975479
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The power manuverability of nuclear power plants (NPPs) is becoming more and more important as governments expand the deployment of renewable energy resources in their energy mix. For this purpose, load follow (LF) operation (LFO) schemes are introduced and tested for different types of reactors. Currently, all NPPs in Korea are operated at a baseload, that is, 100% rated power, and do not rely largely on power tracking control except for startup, shutdown, and some anticipated transients without scram. However, as the contribution of NPPs in the total electricity generation exceeds 50%, LFO may be necessary to balance the intermittency of renewable energy resources. However, the execution of LF can be challenging due to the complex interaction of the nuclear system parameters. Therefore, MODE-K was proposed to investigate the feasibility of LFO for OPR1000 and APR1400. Although MODE-K has shown good results in controlling reactor power and core reactivity, analysis has focused on neutronics aspects only and neglected plant response. A multiphysics LF simulation is therefore undertaken in this work using the multiphysics package RELAP5/SCDAPSIM/MOD3.4/3DKIN to accurately represent the impact of the underlying feedback mechanisms on APR1400 system performance. The simulation uses the three-dimensional neutron kinetics module (3DKIN) to model the reactor core by defining up to eight different control rod banks. Compared to the point-kinetics model of the Reactor Excursion and Leak Analysis Program (RELAP5), the use of 3DKIN yields a more realistic simulation by representing the entire core and reflecting the control rod motion in real time without assumptions related to the axial and radial power distributions, or burnup state.