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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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DOE issues final RFQ for WIPP clean energy initiative
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has issued a request for qualifications for interested parties and prospective offerors looking to enter into a realty agreement for carbon-pollution-free electricity (CFE) projects at the department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant site in southeastern New Mexico.
E. A. Schneider, U. B. Phathanapirom
Nuclear Technology | Volume 193 | Number 3 | March 2016 | Pages 416-429
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT15-6
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper introduces VEGAS, a lightweight and fast-executing fuel cycle simulator primarily intended to augment higher-fidelity fuel cycle simulators. VEGAS can act as a preconditioner as well as a platform for implementing endogenous decision making within these simulators. In preconditioner mode, VEGAS offers an iterative method for accelerating the convergence of fuel cycle optimization problems while ensuring that material balance and other constraints are met. The methodology utilized by VEGAS, particularly its mass balance and reactor deployment algorithms, is presented here. Unique to the VEGAS simulator is a rollback feature that undoes reactor build decisions if material balance constraints are violated. Included in the VEGAS code is an economics package, also documented here, that calculates the evolving levelized cost of electricity. Benchmark comparisons against the VISION (Verifiable Fuel Cycle Simulation Model) simulator are also presented, along with an example of VEGAS’s preconditioning capability in which the objective is to achieve a target system transuranics inventory while installing as little reprocessing capacity as possible.