ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jul 2025
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
April 2026
Latest News
NRC approves TerraPower construction permit
Today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has approved TerraPower’s construction permit application for Kemmerer Unit 1, the company’s first deployment of Natrium, its flagship sodium fast reactor.
This approval is a significant milestone on three fronts. For TerraPower, it represents another step forward in demonstrating its technology. For the Department of Energy, it reflects progress (despite delays) for the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP). For the NRC, it is the first approval granted to a commercial reactor in nearly a decade—and the first approval of a commercial non–light water reactor in more than 40 years.
Bogdan Glumac, Matjaž Ravnik, Marjan Logar
Nuclear Technology | Volume 117 | Number 2 | February 1997 | Pages 248-254
Technical Paper | Nuclear Criticality Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35329
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Additional criticality safety analysis of a pool-type storage for TRIGA spent fuel at the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia, is presented. Previous results have shown that subcriticality is not guaranteed for some postulated accidents (earthquake with subsequent fuel rack disintegration resulting in contact fuel pitch) under the assumption that the fuel rack is loaded with fresh 12 wt% standard fuel. To mitigate this deficiency, a study was done on replacing a certain number of fuel elements in the rack with cadmium-loaded absorber rods. The Monte Carlo computer code MCNP4A with an ENDF/B- V library and detailed three-dimen-sional geometrical model of the spent-fuel rack was used for this purpose. First, a minimum critical number of fuel elements was determined for contact pitch, and two possible geometries of rack disintegration were consid ered. Next, it was shown that subcriticality can be ensured when pitch is decreased from a rack design pitch of 8 cm to contact, if a certain number of fuel elements (8 to 20 out of 70) are replaced by absorber rods, which are uniformly mixed into the lattice. To account for the possibility that random mixing of fuel elements and absorber rods can occur during rack disintegration and result in a supercritical configuration, a probabilistic study was made to sample the probability density functions for random absorber rod lattice loadings. Results of the calculations show that reasonably low probabilities for supercriticality can be achieved (down to 10−6 per severe earthquake, which would result in rack disintegration and subsequent maximum possible pitch decrease) even in the case where fresh 12 wt% standard TRIGA fuel would be stored in the spent-fuel pool.