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Division Spotlight
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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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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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Latest News
Smarter waste strategies: Helping deliver on the promise of advanced nuclear
At COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, a clear consensus emerged: Nuclear energy must be a cornerstone of the global clean energy transition. With electricity demand projected to soar as we decarbonize not just power but also industry, transport, and heat, the case for new nuclear is compelling. More than 20 countries committed to tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050. In the United States alone, the Department of Energy forecasts that the country’s current nuclear capacity could more than triple, adding 200 GW of new nuclear to the existing 95 GW by mid-century.
Atul A. Karve, Paul J. Turinsky
Nuclear Technology | Volume 131 | Number 1 | July 2000 | Pages 48-68
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-A3104
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
As part of the continuing development of the boiling water reactor in-core fuel management optimization code FORMOSA-B, the fidelity of the core simulator has been improved and a control rod pattern (CRP) sampling capability has been added. The robustness of the core simulator is first demonstrated by benchmarking against core load-follow depletion predictions of both SIMULATE-3 and MICROBURN-B2 codes. The CRP sampling capability, based on heuristic rules, is next successfully tested on a fixed fuel loading pattern (LP) to yield a feasible CRP that removes the thermal margin and critical flow constraint violations. Its performance in facilitating a spectral shift flow operation is also demonstrated, and then its significant influence on the cost of thermal margin is presented. Finally, the heuristic CRP sampling capability is coupled with the stochastic LP optimization capability in FORMOSA-B - based on simulated annealing (SA) - to solve the combined CRP-LP optimization problem. Effectiveness of the sampling in improving the efficiency of the SA adaptive algorithm is shown by comparing the results to those obtained with the sampling turned off (i.e., only LP optimization is carried out for the fixed reference CRP). The results presented clearly indicate the successful implementation of the CRP sampling algorithm and demonstrate FORMOSA-B's enhanced optimization features, which facilitate the code's usage for broader optimization studies.
