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Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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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
DOE issues RFQ for clean-energy projects at WIPP
The Department of Energy has issued a request for qualifications (RFQ) for interested parties that are looking to establish carbon pollution–free electricity (CFE) projects at its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant site in New Mexico.
Matthew Memmott, Jacopo Buongiorno, Pavel Hejzlar
Nuclear Technology | Volume 173 | Number 2 | February 2011 | Pages 162-175
Technical Paper | Fuel Design/Defects/ Examination | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A11545
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two innovative fuel concepts, the internally and externally cooled annular fuel and the bottle-shaped fuel, were investigated with the goal of increasing the power density and reducing the pressure drop in the sodium-cooled fast reactor, respectively. The concepts were explored for both high- and low-conversion core configurations and for metal and oxide fuels. The annular fuel concept is best suited for low-conversion metal-fueled cores, where it can enable a power uprate of [approximately]20%; the magnitude of the uprate is limited by the fuel-clad chemical interaction temperature constraint during a hypothetical flow blockage of the inner annular channel. The bottle-shaped fuel concept is best suited for tight high-conversion ratio cores, where it can reduce the overall core pressure drop in the fuel channels by >30%, with a corresponding increase in core height between 15 and 18%. A full-plant RELAP5-3D model was created to evaluate the transient performance of the innovative fuel configurations during the unprotected transient overpower and station blackout. The transient analysis confirmed the good thermal-hydraulic performance of the annular and bottle-shaped fuel designs with respect to the reference case with traditional solid fuel pins.