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Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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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.
Shawkat S. Khairullah, Carl R. Elks
Nuclear Technology | Volume 202 | Number 2 | May-June 2018 | Pages 141-152
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1450014
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the essential concepts being postulated for next generation nuclear power plants (NPPs) that could include Gen IV reactors—small modular reactors—is the notion of resilient and survivable instrumentation and control (I&C) systems. Resilience at the system and plant level will rely on highly robust and fault-tolerant digital embedded devices as a foundation. This paper presents a new self-healing programmable digital I&C architecture, BioSymPLe, inspired from the way nature responds, defends, and heals: the stem cells in the immune system of living organisms and the pathway from DNA to protein. The BioSymPLe is organized in a four-layered approach: (1) cellular layer that includes four sublayers, with each sublayer allocating two functional B cells which represent the building block that executes the local functionality of NPP critical application based on the expression for DNA genetic codes stored inside each cell; (2) tissue layer that embeds eight redundant T cells and eight routing units to facilitate coordination and organized behavior among a network of four cellular sublayers; (3) internal healing layer that monitors the correct execution of functions at the cellular level and activates healing mechanism at the tissue level; and (4) external healing layer using a concept of embryonic stem cells by differentiating this type of cell to repair the faulty T cells. Finally, the BioSymPLe is capable of tolerating a significant number of faults (transient, permanent, or hardware common cause failures) that can stem from environmental disturbances, and we believe it can positively impact the operation of next generation digital I&C systems in NPPs.