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Conference Spotlight
2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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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Dec 2025
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Nuclear Science and Engineering
December 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
November 2025
Latest News
Modernizing I&C for operations and maintenance, one phase at a time
The two reactors at Dominion Energy’s Surry plant are among the oldest in the U.S. nuclear fleet. Yet when the plant celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023, staff could raise a toast to the future. Surry was one of the first plants to file a subsequent license renewal (SLR) application, and in May 2021, it became official: the plant was licensed to operate for a full 80 years, extending its reactors’ lifespans into 2052 and 2053.
Marina Sessim, Michael R. Tonks
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 7 | July 2021 | Pages 1004-1014
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.1910005
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) provides a consistent source of thrust for long space missions. However, fuel development for NTP reactors is a major technological hurdle. Existing modeling and simulation tools developed by the U.S. Nuclear Engineering Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program for power reactors can be leveraged to help accelerate the fuel development. This work is a preliminary demonstration of the application of NEAMS tools to model NTP fuel. Specifically, the fuel performance tool BISON and the mesoscale reactor materials tool MARMOT are used to develop a multiscale model of thermal transport in a W-UO2 CERMET fuel element for NTP reactors. Three-dimensional simulations in MARMOT are used to estimate the effective thermal conductivity (ETC) of fresh CERMET fuel at temperatures ranging from 1500 K to 3000 K. The ETC values from MARMOT are then used in BISON simulations that predict the steady-state temperature profile throughout a 61-subchannel hexagonal fuel element. The temperature varies by 83 K throughout the fuel element, with the highest temperature occurring near the outer edges of the element. BISON is also used to show that the temperature profile in prototype fuel elements with fewer subchannels does not vary significantly from that in the 61-subchannel element.
