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Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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Latest News
Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
Taira Hazama, Akihiro Kitano, Y. Kishimoto
Nuclear Technology | Volume 179 | Number 2 | August 2012 | Pages 250-265
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A14097
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Japanese prototype fast breeder reactor Monju restarted its system startup test in May 2010 after a 14-year interruption. In the first stage of the test, reactor physics parameters have been measured at a zero power level.The present paper describes the evaluation of the criticality data. The best-estimate value and its uncertainty are evaluated as accurately as possible, following the guidelines recommended by the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project.The restart core contains 1.5 wt% of 241Am, which is three times more than the previous test. To extract the influence of the 241Am accumulation on calculation accuracy, criticality data obtained in the previous test are evaluated at the same level of detail.The calculation accuracy is investigated with four major nuclear data libraries. It is confirmed that the accuracy is within 0.3% k/k, a 2 value of experimental uncertainty, with JENDL-3.3, JENDL-4.0, and ENDF/B-VII.0. The reactivity change due to the 241Pu decay can be simulated within an accuracy of 1% with JENDL-4.0 and JEFF-3.1.