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Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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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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Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
R. Ponciroli, Y. Wang, Z. Zhou, A. Botterud, J. Jenkins, R. B. Vilim, F. Ganda
Nuclear Technology | Volume 200 | Number 3 | December 2017 | Pages 189-207
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1388668
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This work explores the technical challenges associated with flexible operation for nuclear power plants (NPPs) and evaluates whether a flexible operational mode could improve the profitability of nuclear units by allowing nuclear plant owners/operators to reduce output when prices are low and instead shift capacity to the ancillary services markets. As compared to conventional power plants, NPP flexible operation capabilities are affected by additional physics-induced constraints. Among the most limiting constraints is the negative reactivity insertion following every reactor power drop due to the increased concentration of xenon, a strong neutron poison. In this work, a previously available power system operation model based on mixed-integer linear programming optimization was improved by implementing a dedicated representation of these physics-induced constraints for pressurized water reactors (PWRs). Because the xenon-related constraint involves nonlinear governing dynamics, a dedicated parametric approach was implemented. To evaluate the economic implications of flexible PWR operation, a case study using realistic power system data representative of the southwestern United States was analyzed. The results indicate that flexible operation can increase the revenue of nuclear units while at the same time reducing total electric system operating costs.