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Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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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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Former Exelon CEO Chris Crane remembered for “transformational milestones”
Crane
Exelon announced that Chris Crane, the company’s former chief executive, passed away on Saturday in Chicago at the age of 65.
Crane served as the company’s president and CEO from 2012 until his retirement in December 2022. During his tenure, he steered the energy company through several transformational milestones, including the successful mergers with Constellation Energy in 2012 and Pepco Holdings in 2016, creating the largest utility business by customer count in the United States.
In 2022, with the spin-off of Constellation as the generation and retail side of energy business (with the largest U.S. nuclear fleet), Crane led the creation of a stand-alone transmission and delivery energy company.
Roberto Ponciroli, Stefano Passerini, Richard B. Vilim
Nuclear Technology | Volume 191 | Number 2 | August 2015 | Pages 151-166
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-68
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The recent interest in the Small Modular Reactor (SMR) for its potential increased economic competitiveness has focused attention in part on reducing operational costs to offset those plant costs that do not benefit from the economies of scale of large traditional units. Plant operation and maintenance economics are significantly driven by plant availability, which can be enhanced by means of innovative control strategies by avoiding unnecessary plant or unit trips. In this context, an effective strategy for achieving fast runback of a sodium-cooled SMR has been developed. In this work, after having defined and modeled a suitable control strategy by adopting the Petri nets formalism, a Model-based Predictive Control regulator has been developed in order to reduce as promptly as possible the power level, without scramming the reactor (fast runback) and possibly limiting the control rod contribution. Such flexibility could lead to significant savings in the operational costs of the reactor while also improving the system availability. The proposed procedure has been characterized by simulating the operational transients on both an oxide-fueled reactor and on a metal-fueled reactor, comparing the responses of the two different configurations and the respectively needed control rod contribution.