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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
Senate EPW Committee to hold Nieh nomination hearing
Nieh
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a nomination hearing Wednesday for Ho Nieh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as commission at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Trump nominated Nieh on July 30 to serve as NRC commissioner the remainder of a term that will expire June 30, 2029, as Nuclear NewsWire previously reported.
Nieh has been vice president of regulatory affairs at Southern Nuclear since 2021, though since June 2024 he has been at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations as a loaned executive.
A return to the NRC: If confirmed by the Senate, Nieh would be returning to the NRC after three previous stints totaling nearly 20 years.
Vedant K. Mehta, Zachary A. Miller, Dasari V. Rao
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 8 | August 2023 | Pages 2161-2175
Technical papers from: PHYSOR 2022 | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2164150
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Metal hydrides are being seriously considered for advanced nuclear reactor or microreactor applications due to their solid physical state and high hydrogen density. Using hydrides for autonomous applications poses several research and development challenges, one of which relates to neutron upscattering in the thermal energy regime. These hydrides, including zirconium hydride and yttrium hydride, result in a positive temperature coefficient of reactivity for several advanced reactor designs. In this study, we consider one such design that exhibits positive feedback from metal hydrides and thoroughly investigate the neutronic aspects of the core. Temperature reactivity coefficients for four fuels and two hydride moderator configurations are studied, and the total temperature coefficients are found to be positive for all designs, showing that this issue cannot be resolved simply by material variations. Accordingly, five epi-thermal absorbers were evaluated to demonstrate the feasibility of the excess positive feedback suppression in the core instigating from neutron energy spectrum shift. Following which, two promising burnable poison candidates are selected to investigate further throughout the core discharge. Promising results are shown for this core design, which can be extended to other hydride-moderated remote special-purpose reactor designs.