ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
Meeting Spotlight
2021 Student Conference
April 8–10, 2021
Virtual Meeting
Standards Program
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2021
Jul 2020
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2021
Nuclear Technology
February 2021
Fusion Science and Technology
January 2021
Latest News
NC State celebrates 70 years of nuclear engineering education
An early picture of the research reactor building on the North Carolina State University campus. The Department of Nuclear Engineering is celebrating the 70th anniversary of its nuclear engineering curriculum in 2020–2021. Photo: North Carolina State University
The Department of Nuclear Engineering at North Carolina State University has spent the 2020–2021 academic year celebrating the 70th anniversary of its becoming the first U.S. university to establish a nuclear engineering curriculum. It started in 1950, when Clifford Beck, then of Oak Ridge, Tenn., obtained support from NC State’s dean of engineering, Harold Lampe, to build the nation’s first university nuclear reactor and, in conjunction, establish an educational curriculum dedicated to nuclear engineering.
The department, host to the 2021 ANS Virtual Student Conference, scheduled for April 8–10, now features 23 tenure/tenure-track faculty and three research faculty members. “What a journey for the first nuclear engineering curriculum in the nation,” said Kostadin Ivanov, professor and department head.
Luciano Burgazzi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 173 | Number 2 | February 2011 | Pages 153-161
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | dx.doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A11544
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper describes a modeling and analysis approach for reliability prediction based on degradation modeling, considering multiple degradation measures and with respect to the thermal-hydraulic passive systems.Previous research on the topic has drawn attention to the susceptibility of passive systems to several modes of failure. In fact, it has been recognized that a system may have, in addition to component mechanism failures, multiple degradation paths, so it is necessary to simultaneously consider multiple degradation measures. Also, many research efforts on degradation analysis were initiated by making assumptions about the degradation mechanism. In reality, often there is very limited understanding about the concerned degradation mechanisms together with their interdependencies.In this paper, an analysis procedure is developed to address this aspect. Simulated data have been used to illustrate the applicability of this approach. Results on the application of the methods to a simplified model of the passive residual heat transport system in water-cooled reactors is presented. It was verified that when the multiple degradation measures in a system are correlated, an incorrect independence assumption may overestimate the system reliability.
