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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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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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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Latest News
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Kazuhiro Sawa, Tsutomu Tobita
Nuclear Technology | Volume 142 | Number 3 | June 2003 | Pages 250-259
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3387
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In current high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs), Tri-isotropic (TRISO)-coated fuel particles are employed as fuel. In safety design of the HTGR fuels, it is important to retain fission products within particles so that their release to primary coolant does not exceed an acceptable level. From this point of view, the basic design criteria for the fuel are to minimize the failure fraction of as-fabricated fuel coating layers and to prevent significant additional fuel failures during operation. The maximum burnup of the first-loading fuel of the High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR) is limited to 3.6%FIMA (% fission per initial metallic atom) to certify its integrity during the operation. In order to investigate fuel behavior under extended burnup condition, irradiation tests were performed. The irradiation was carried out as HRB-22 and 91F-1A capsule irradiation tests. The fuel for the irradiation tests was called extended burnup fuel, whose target burnup and fast neutron fluence were higher than those of the first-loading fuel of the HTTR. In order to keep fuel integrity up to over 5%FIMA, the thickness of buffer and SiC layers of fuel particle were increased. The fuel compacts were irradiated in the HRB-22 and the 91F-1A capsules at the High Flux Isotope Reactor of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and at the Japan Materials Testing Reactor of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute, respectively. The comparison of measured and calculated release rate-to-birth rate ratios showed that there were additional failures in both irradiation tests. A pressure vessel failure model analysis showed that no tensile stresses acted on the SiC layers even at the end of irradiation and no pressure vessel failure occurred in the intact particles even in a particle with thin buffer layer with failed OPyC layer. The presumed failure mechanisms are additional through-coatings failure of as-fabricated SiC-failed particles or an excessive increase of internal pressure by the accelerated irradiation. Further study is needed to clarify the failure mechanism.