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Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
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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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High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Yiqian Wu, Zhiyao Liu, Ming Jia, Cong Chi Tran, Shengyuan Yan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 1 | January 2020 | Pages 94-106
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1620055
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The development of a model for mental workload (MWL) prediction of an operator in nuclear power plants (NPPs) is necessary but challenging. In this study, the validity, sensitivity, and relationship between the four indices of eye tracking (i.e., pupil dilation, blink rate, fixation rate, and saccadic rate) and subjective rating method (i.e., the National Aeronautics and Space Administration-Task Load Index) of both experts and nonexperts when they are operating the state-oriented procedure system in NPPs are analyzed. An artificial neural network (ANN) is used to develop the MWL prediction model using the data of nonexperts. The correlation analysis results indicate that four eye tracking indices are sensitive to the subjective MWL, but there is no significant difference in the pupil diameter and saccadic rate between the experts and nonexperts. The validity of the proposed ANN-based prediction model is proven by the high correlation coefficient (higher than 0.95) between the original and predicted data. However, when the proposed ANN model was applied to the experts’ data, there was a significant difference between the original and predicted data. Therefore, the proposed prediction model can be applied to the experts’ data but with a certain adjustment to obtain the most possibly reasonable results.