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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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
Don’t get boxed in: Entergy CNO Kimberly Cook-Nelson shares her journey
Kimberly Cook-Nelson
For Kimberly Cook-Nelson, the path to the nuclear industry started with a couple of refrigerator boxes and cellophane paper. Her sixth-grade science project was inspired by her father, who worked at Seabrook power station in New Hampshire as a nuclear operator.
“I had two big refrigerator boxes I taped together. I cut the ‘primary operating system’ and the ‘secondary system’ out of them. Then I used different colored cellophane paper to show the pressurized water system versus the steam versus the cold cooling water,” Cook-Nelson said. “My dad got me those little replica pellets that I could pass out to people as they were going by at my science fair.”
Yuanjie Fang, Minrui Fei, Hong Qian, Ling Wang, Kai Chen
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 7 | July 2022 | Pages 886-898
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2027737
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear reactor core power level control and the average coolant temperature usually adopt independent control strategies, but tracking only one single core power makes the coolant temperature control risky in a disturbance situation. To solve this problem, a reference trajectory calculation based on the coolant outlet temperature under the steady state of the reactor power is designed; then, a model predictive controller with a dual objective optimization function, which also includes a relaxation factor, is constructed. By setting the tracking weight matrix in the controller, the tendency setting of dual target trajectory tracking can be realized. Simulation experiments verify the effectiveness of core power level control considering the coolant outlet temperature trajectory tracking. Furthermore, the tracking effect of different weight matrices is simulated and analyzed. The results show that the developed control strategy is more flexible than a single control scheme.