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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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Overcoming the challenge of obsolete pressure transmitters in aging nuclear power plants
Curtiss-Wright’s strength in nuclear qualified pressure and temperature products is supported by its recent acquisition of Weed Instrument Company, Inc., one of the original specialists in that field. A great example of our organization helping customers overcome the challenge of aging and obsolescence is our DTC3™ pressure transmitter, which was designed as a drop-in replacement for the almost ubiquitous but now discontinued Rosemount™ 1151.
Robert Petroski, Benoit Forget, Charles Forsberg
Nuclear Technology | Volume 180 | Number 1 | October 2012 | Pages 28-45
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A14517
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A fuel cycle option is evaluated in which fuel bred in breed-and-burn (B&B) reactors is used to start up additional B&B reactors, with the fuel being recycled using limited-separations processes instead of full actinide reprocessing. This fuel cycle aims to minimize processing requirements and proliferation risk while still being able to achieve exponential growth and high uranium utilization. The neutron excess concept is applied to compute the starting fuel requirements of new B&B reactors, allowing fleet doubling times to be estimated. A simple analytic expression for doubling time is derived, which is applied to example B&B reactors using a hypothetical core composition. It is found that larger reactors are able to achieve shorter doubling times because of their smaller starter fuel requirements per unit power. Several variant fuel cycle configurations are examined, and their doubling times are computed.