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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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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
WIPP improves utility shaft safety, begins infrastructure project
Harrison Western Shaft Sinkers (HWSS), the company drilling a new utility shaft at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, has retained a safety culture expert following a near-miss accident in the shaft late last year. The safety expert will conduct monthly facilitated discussions with crews working on the shaft to reinforce expectations for identifying concerns regarding unsafe circumstances, according to a recent report by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB).
Joel A. Kulesza
Nuclear Technology | Volume 175 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 228-237
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 16th Biennial Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division / Radiation Transport and Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A12294
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the computational fluid dynamics analysis to determine the necessary cooling airflow rates in the reactor cavity of a nuclear power plant during operation, the heat generated in the sacrificial bioshield and adjacent components is a significant source term. Traditionally, a three-dimensional (3-D) flux synthesis method is used to calculate the heat generation rate in the bioshield for reactors with a cylindrical reactor cavity because there is minimal azimuthal variation. However, the AP1000™ reactor incorporates an octagonal reactor cavity design with 12 ex-core detectors, leading to potentially significant impacts on the azimuthal heat generation rate distribution. Therefore, it was of interest to benchmark the traditional flux synthesis method with full 3-D discrete ordinates methods. Because of an uncertainty in the amount of mesh refinement necessary to have confidence in the results, a sensitivity study on the mesh refinement was performed with a parallel 3-D discrete ordinates code. This allowed a comparison with an industry-standard serial 3-D discrete ordinates code in terms of both execution speed and calculated results.The results suggest that for angular positions where the flux synthesis method incorporates an axial model, there is relatively good agreement with 3-D methods (within ±20%). In areas remote from axial models, there are differences of up to a factor of 2 in a nonconservative direction. Furthermore, a recently developed parallel 3-D discrete ordinates radiation transport code was shown to produce results generally consistent with the industry-standard 3-D code used (within 2.5%). Finally, the parallel code completed its calculations in 10% of the time required by the serial code for an identically sized problem.