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Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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.
Akifumi Yamaji, Katsuyuki Kawashima, Shigeo Ohki, Tomoyasu Mizuno, Tsutomu Okubo
Nuclear Technology | Volume 171 | Number 2 | August 2010 | Pages 142-152
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A10779
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The idea of recycling minor actinides (MAs) with fast breeder reactors (FBRs) is an effective way to potentially reduce environmental burdens associated with nuclear energy production. For such FBR cores, it is necessary to find one or more promising MA loading methods that can effectively transmute MAs while minimizing deterioration of the core performance and reducing the overall fuel fabrication cost. In this study, the homogeneous MA loading core with 3 wt% MAs is used as a reference design to evaluate the impact of the americium (Am) target in-core loading on reactivity characteristics and unprotected loss-of-flow (ULOF) response of sodium-cooled mixed-oxide FBR.The Am target loading core of this study is designed by roughly preserving the MA inventory of the homogeneous MA loading core while placing Am and curium (Cm) to the ring-shaped target region between the inner and the outer core regions with 20 wt% content.This design can flatten core radial reactivity worth distributions and effectively reduce reactivity insertion into the core during ULOF compared with the homogeneous MA loading core. It also has relatively flat and stable radial power distributions, which allow a relatively large coolant flow rate to be distributed to the target region.During ULOF, the power increase of the Am target loading core of this study is slower than that of the homogeneous MA loading core. The maximum fuel temperature of the target region does not become particularly high compared with that of the inner core, and it is much lower than the melting point. Hence, the proposed Am target in-core loading method does not have a significant influence on ULOF response of the core. It is promising from the viewpoints of the reactivity characteristics and ULOF response.