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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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!
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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
Brian S. Triplett, Eric P. Loewen, Brett J. Dooies
Nuclear Technology | Volume 178 | Number 2 | May 2012 | Pages 186-200
Technical Paper | Small Modular Reactors / Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT178-186
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Power Reactor Innovative Small Module (PRISM) designed by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy is a small, modular, sodium-cooled fast reactor. The PRISM core is located in a pool-type containment vessel and is fueled with metallic fuel. Each PRISM produces 311 MW of electricity. The PRISM is inherently safe due to its negative power reactivity feedback, large in-vessel coolant inventory, passive heat removal systems, below-grade siting, and atmospheric reactor vessel operating pressure. In NUREG-1368, "Preapplication Safety Evaluation Report for the Power Reactor Innovative Small Module (PRISM) Liquid-Metal Reactor," the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission stated that "On the basis of the review performed, the staff, with the ACRS [Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards] in agreement, concludes that no obvious impediments to licensing the PRISM design have been identified." PRISM is able to fission electrometallurgically recycled used nuclear fuel (UNF) from light water reactors as well as weapons-grade materials. PRISM, with the associated Nuclear Fuel Recycling Center, represents a safe, diversion resistant, commercially viable technology for recycling UNF with a small modular reactor.
