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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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Deep Space: The new frontier of radiation controls
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
Ziping Liu, Yu Ji, Han Zhang, Jun Sun
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 8 | August 2022 | Pages 1337-1351
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2031498
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Composite materials are essential in various energy fields owing to their improved heat transfer characteristics. Due to their inhomogeneous structure, it is difficult to obtain the heat transfer details. Effective thermal conductivity (ETC) is an important lumped thermal parameter used to analyze the heat transfer process in composite materials. Existing ETC models are derived by applying a temperature difference (TD) on two opposite boundaries of the composite material to induce heat flow. However, for some composite materials, such as nuclear fuels, the effect of the inner heat source (IHS) is typically ignored. Thus, the suitability of using ETC models based on a TD scheme for composite materials with IHS still requires further investigation. In this study, first the conserved quantities of ETC of the TD and IHS schemes were determined. For normal materials of the TD scheme, the conserved quantity of ETC can be selected as heat flow, whereas for nuclear fuels of the IHS scheme, the average temperatures are recommended as the conserved quantity. Then the general ETC models for composite plate were derived considering both the TD and IHS schemes and special cases with either TD or IHS were also analyzed. Finally, based on the results of this study, the idea of studying the ETC of tristructural-isotropic or TRISO particle-based nuclear fuels is proposed.