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Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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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Latest News
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Akio Yamamoto, Masahiro Tatsumi, Naoki Sugimura
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 163 | Number 2 | October 2009 | Pages 144-151
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE08-80
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new burnup calculation method, called the projected predictor-corrector (PPC) method, is proposed. In comparison with the conventional predictor-corrector (PC) method, a larger time-step size can be used in burnup calculation without losing calculational accuracy. The PPC method is especially useful for Gd-bearing fuel assemblies, for which a fine time step size is necessary in burnup calculations. The PPC method utilizes a correlation between the number density and the reaction rate in each burnable nuclide and improves the accuracy of the microscopic reaction rate in the corrector step by estimating the “projected” reaction rate. The additional computation time for the PPC method is negligible. Verification calculations are performed for 17 × 17 pressurized water reactor fuel assemblies with 16 Gd-bearing fuel rods. The content of Gd in Gd-bearing fuel rods is set to be 2 to 10 wt%. The calculation results indicate that the PPC method shows comparable accuracy to conventional PC methods whose step time size is about half; i.e., the number of burnup steps in the PPC method can be reduced to about half of that in the conventional PC method.