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The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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Latest News
A diamond battery for Valentine’s Day?
The world’s first carbon-14 diamond battery became a reality in a United Kingdom laboratory this past December when it was created by scientists from University of Bristol and the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
Derjew Ayele Ejigu, Xiaojing Liu
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 6 | June 2023 | Pages 1239-1254
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2138688
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a system of several integrated components such as the core, steam generator, hot leg, cold leg, and plenums. The subsystems consist of critical parameters and malfunctions that cause potential accidents. Therefore, a PWR requires a control system for safe and stable operation over its lifetime. In this study, the state-space model of the PWR core is established and validated with published work. Then, a beetle antenna search (BAS) algorithm–optimized radial basis function (RBF) neural network proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control (BAS-RBF-PID) strategy is proposed to regulate the core power. The BAS-RBF-PID control approach computes the control input to optimize the PWR core output power to track the reference command. The integral absolute error and integral time absolute error criterion functions are used to measure the control performance. The sensitivity of the control input on the PWR output is examined through the Jacobian, and the stability is analyzed by using the Lyapunov approach and Nichols chart. The simulation results verified that the PWR core output power chased the reference command smoothly as compared with the BAS-PID and PID strategies with good performance. This confirms that the control signal optimizes the core power effectively. This study gives the benefit to apply the BAS-RBF-PID algorithm in other nuclear engineering fields for control purposes.