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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.
Thomas J. Hirons, R. Douglas O'Dell
Nuclear Technology | Volume 9 | Number 1 | July 1970 | Pages 93-106
Fuel | Symposium on Theoretical Models for Predicting In-Reactor Performance of Fuel and Cladding Material | doi.org/10.13182/NT70-A28731
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The economic analysis of a large fast breeder is dependent on fuel-cycle parameters, such as fuel-discharge rate and breeding ratio. In this work, the variation of fuel-cycle parameters with several burnup-model characteristics was studied. These characteristics are the amount of region detail used in describing the reactor, the initial fissile content of the reactor, the maintenance of criticality during the burnup step, the distribution of the control poison during the burnup step, and the flux or power shift over the reactor lifetime. Each of these model characteristics was studied in detail for its effect on the burnup history of the reactor. The mass balances obtained from several of the burnup studies were input to a reactor economics code to determine the economic effects of changes in the model characteristics. The greatest effect on the fuel-cycle analysis was produced by the treatment of the relative flux shift between burnup intervals.
