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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
Standards Program
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
Former NRC commissioners lend support to efforts to eliminate mandatory hearings
A group of nine former nuclear regulatory commissioners sent a letter Wednesday to the current Nuclear Regulatory Commission members lending support to efforts to get rid of mandatory hearings in the licensing process, which should speed up the process by three to six months and save millions of dollars.
V. Subramanian, P. Sahoo, N. Malathi, R. Ananthanarayanan, R. Baskaran, B. Saha
Nuclear Technology | Volume 165 | Number 3 | March 2009 | Pages 257-269
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A4100
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the context of safety analysis of fast reactors, information on chemical speciation of sodium aerosol formed due to sodium fire is important. Clough and Garland studied theoretically the formation of NaOH and Na2CO3. Hofmann et al. and Cherdron and Jordan reported their experimental results on chemical speciation of sodium aerosols after certain periods of exposure to atmosphere based on wet chemical analysis. It is difficult to obtain quantitative information on chemical species present in dilute solutions by conventional chemical analysis. Appropriate chemical instrumentation is needed for this purpose, the development of which, along with the methodology adopted for chemical speciation, is discussed in this paper. The present technique provides rapid information on the composition of species as a function of time following a sodium fire. Experiments were conducted in the Aerosol Test Facility (ATF) in which sodium aerosols were generated, collected on filter papers, dissolved in water, and subjected to chemical characterization using a laboratory-developed high-resolution conductometric titration facility. The titration plots revealed the presence of NaOH and Na2CO3 as the two major components in the dissolved aqueous solutions. The concentrations of these species were derived with due consideration of the hydrolysis of Na2CO3 in water. It was possible to relate these concentrations to the compositions of the samples on the filter paper residues through a separate series of measurements on the dissolved solutions of the synthetic mixtures of NaOH and Na2CO3 of known compositions in the solid phase. It has been confirmed by our experimental results that for the initial mass concentration of the aerosol at ~2 gm-3 and in a confined environment of 1 m3, at a relative humidity of 50 to 65%, the entire species of sodium compound aerosol becomes sodium carbonate within 500 s from the onset of fire.