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May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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What’s the most difficult question you’ve been asked as a maintenance instructor?
Blye Widmar
"Where are the prints?!"
This was the final question in an onslaught of verbal feedback, comments, and critiques I received from my students back in 2019. I had two years of instructor experience and was teaching a class that had been meticulously rehearsed in preparation for an accreditation visit. I knew the training material well and transferred that knowledge effectively enough for all the students to pass the class. As we wrapped up, I asked the students how they felt about my first big system-level class, and they did not hold back.
“Why was the exam from memory when we don’t work from memory in the plant?” “Why didn’t we refer to the vendor documents?” “Why didn’t we practice more on the mock-up?” And so on.
R. C. Lloyd, E. D. Clayton, L. E. Hansen, S. R. Bierman
Nuclear Technology | Volume 18 | Number 3 | June 1973 | Pages 225-230
Technical Paper | Chemical Processing | doi.org/10.13182/NT73-A31297
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A series of criticality experiments was performed on plutonium nitrate solutions in slab geometry. The solutions contained plutonium at concentrations ranging between 58 and 412 g Pu/liter for material with three different isotopic contents: 4.6, 18.4, and 23.2 wt% 240Pu. Acid molarities varied from 1.6 to 5.0. The experiments were performed with a variable thickness slab-type vessel of 42-in. height and width, whose thickness could be adjusted throughout a range of 3 to 9 in. The experimental vessel was used with and without a water reflector and also with a 1-in.-thick Plexiglas reflector. The critical experiment data from the finite slabs were corrected to yield values of critical thicknesses for one-dimensional infinite slabs, i.e., slabs of finite thickness but of infinite height and width. Analytical corrections, based on experimental data, were subsequently used to correct the critical infinite slab thicknesses for materials extraneous to the plutonium solutions, such as the effect of the stainless-steel vessel walls and room return neutrons. The analysis provided values for clean one-dimensional assemblies that were then used as an integral check of calculational methods using cross sections from the ENDF/B-II data file. The computed values of keff for these “clean assemblies” ranged between 0.988 and 1.040; the values increased somewhat with increasing concentration.