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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.
Stephen M. Bajorek, Fan-Bill Cheung
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 1 | January-February 2019 | Pages 307-327
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1510697
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been conducting thermal-hydraulic research using the Rod Bundle Heat Transfer (RBHT) facility at the Pennsylvania State University since 2001. The facility has been used for five individual test programs: forced reflood, steam cooling, mixture level swell, dispersed droplet injection, and oscillatory reflood test series. While rod bundle thermal hydraulics has been extensively studied in the past, the RBHT data have provided new insights into rod bundle phenomena especially on the effects of spacer grids. This paper provides a summary of the RBHT test program and discusses some of the major findings from this research with the emphasis on reflood thermal hydraulics and the effect of spacer grids.
Of particular interest are data that enable model and correlation development. Recent efforts have focused on the evaluation of RBHT data and development of improved models and correlations suitable for systems thermal-hydraulic codes such as TRACE and RELAP. Because of detailed instrumentation on and about spacer grids, RBHT data have enabled improved models for convective heat transfer enhancement and droplet breakup. New correlations for the inverted annular and the inverted slug film boiling regimes have also been developed as an initial step toward an improved model for dispersed droplet film boiling.