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2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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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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Modernizing I&C for operations and maintenance, one phase at a time
The two reactors at Dominion Energy’s Surry plant are among the oldest in the U.S. nuclear fleet. Yet when the plant celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023, staff could raise a toast to the future. Surry was one of the first plants to file a subsequent license renewal (SLR) application, and in May 2021, it became official: the plant was licensed to operate for a full 80 years, extending its reactors’ lifespans into 2052 and 2053.
Jesson Hutchinson, Jennifer Alwin, Theresa Cutler, Matthew Gooden, Noah Kleedtke, Denise Neudecker, Nicholas Thompson, Robert Weldon, Nicholas Whitman, Robert Little
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 199 | Number 1 | January 2025 | Pages 42-60
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2024.2343118
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Reaction rate ratios are integral responses that are used within the criticality experiments field because they contain spectral information. While these types of measurements have been utilized for nuclear data validation with historic experiments, few experiments of this type have been utilized for recent experiments, as few exist. This work focuses on measured reaction rate ratios for two nearly bare plutonium critical assemblies with different geometries: one that is cube like (with a Pu mass of 40 kg) and one that is slab like (with a Pu mass of 109 kg). Irradiations were performed with both configurations in which foils were placed near the center of the assembly. Plutonium, highly enriched uranium, depleted uranium, and Au foils were included in the irradiation and counted via high-purity germanium detectors. From these measurements, reaction rate ratios were calculated.
Measured and simulated values and uncertainties are presented for the reaction rate ratios. Ratios utilizing the following reactions are given in this work: 197Au(n, ), 197Au(n,2n), 235U(n,fission), 238U(n,fission), 238U(n,2n), 238U(n,), and 239Pu(n,fission). Uncertainties for the measured reaction rate ratios ranged from 4% to 7%, and the contribution of various parameters to this uncertainty was investigated. The results are compared to historical experiments and should be used for nuclear data validation for future nuclear data library releases. These measurements are part of the EUCLID (Experiments Underpinned by Computational Learning for Improvements in Nuclear Data) project, which utilizes measurement responses in addition to keff (such as these reaction rate ratios) to help reduce uncertainties in 239Pu nuclear data.