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Conference Spotlight
2026 Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
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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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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.
Avinash Kumar Acharya, E. Hemanth Rao, M. Menaka, Sanjay Kumar Das, D. Ponraju, B. Venkatraman
Nuclear Technology | Volume 209 | Number 9 | September 2023 | Pages 1351-1364
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2199079
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Sodium boiling in a fuel subassembly of a sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor is a very critical phenomenon as void propagation may lead to loss of heat removal and increase in reactivity. Hence, sodium boiling behavior from the incipient stage and evolution of bubble dynamics need to be thoroughly understood toward validating various thermal-hydraulic models pertaining to safety analysis of fast reactors. An experimental program has been taken up at Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research to investigate incipient sodium boiling toward spatiotemporal evaluation of bubble characteristics in sodium. Real-time X-ray radioscopy has been employed for in-sodium visualization of bubbles generated during sodium boiling. The raw images obtained during the experiment were processed using an in-house–developed image processing algorithm that includes background subtraction, noise filtering, and segmentation techniques for enhancement of foreground features. A max filter–based tracker is also devised for clear depiction of bubble boundary and motion with time during the boiling process. Attributes like bubble diameter, nucleation site density, and bubble velocity are determined effectively from the captured images using the algorithm. The paper focuses on the experiment, imaging technique using X-ray radioscopy, and image processing toward depicting the bubble characteristics during sodium boiling in a vertical channel.