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The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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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.
Bo-Young Han, Hee-Sung Shin, Ho-Dong Kim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 182 | Number 3 | June 2013 | Pages 369-377
Technical Note | Fuel Cycle and Management | dx.doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A16986
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Pyrochemical processing (pyroprocessing) was developed to recover plutonium that is inherently comingled with minor actinides, uranium, and fission products and has been studied with the aim of recovering actinide elements from spent nuclear fuel. Although a significant amount of attention has been given to pyroprocessing technology as a future fuel recycling system, safeguards approaches are challengeable because of a lack of international experience with safeguarding pyroprocessing facilities beyond those at a pilot scale. Safeguards have primarily depended on nuclear material accountancy with the measurement uncertainties inherent in nuclear material flow. When the weakness of nuclear material accountancy is addressed, the quantity of material unaccounted for (MUF) is generally regarded as an important measure of the safeguardability of a facility. Statistically, the observed MUF is a random variable that is an estimate of the true MUF because the observed MUF is affected by measurement errors. The MUF uncertainty can be calculated by properly combining the random error and systematic error of the nuclear material accounting measurement. Therefore, in this study, a conceptual design for estimation of the uncertainty of MUF that can occur in a reference pyroprocessing facility (REPF) is developed, where REPF is a model used to optimize the safeguardability of a future pyroprocessing facility.