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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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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.
Rui Hu, Mujid S. Kazimi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 177 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 8-28
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | dx.doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A13324
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The TRACE/PARCS code was applied in this work to examine the validity of the coupled three-dimensional thermal-hydraulics and neutronics system analysis codes for boiling water reactor stability analysis. The evaluation was performed against the Ringhals-1 stability tests and compared with the frequency domain analysis using the code STAB. A comprehensive assessment of modeling choices for the TRACE stability analysis has been made, including effects of time-space discretization and numerical schemes, thermal-hydraulics channel grouping, neutronics modeling, and control system modeling. It was found that with careful control of numerical diffusion, the predictions from TRACE agree reasonably well with the Ringhals-1 test results and the predictions from STAB. The benchmark results of both codes against the Ringhals stability test are found to be at the same level of accuracy. The biases for the predicted global decay ratio are [approximately]0.07 in TRACE results and -0.04 in STAB results. However, the standard deviations of their decay ratios are both large, [approximately]0.1, indicating large uncertainties in both analyses. The uncertainties in both modeling approaches are identified. Although the TRACE code uses more sophisticated neutronics and thermal-hydraulics models, the modeling uncertainty is not less than that of the STAB code.