ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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!
Latest Magazine Issues
May 2024
Jan 2024
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2024
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
U.S. nuclear capacity factors: Ideal for data centers?
Baseload nuclear generation doesn’t get the respect it deserves, if you ask nuclear operators. But the hyperscale data centers that process our digital lives—like the one right next to the Susquehanna plant in northeastern Pennsylvania—are pushing electricity demand up. Clean, reliable capacity now looks a lot more valuable.
P. D. Vaswani, P. K. Tamboli, Debraj Chakraborty
Nuclear Technology | Volume 210 | Number 1 | January 2024 | Pages 126-136
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2023.2214662
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper considers an optimized full state feedback (FSF) optimal controller for bulk power control of a 700-MW(electric) pressurized heavy water reactor (PHWR) that minimizes the controller norm to reduce the effect of disturbances. Lyapunov’s linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) have been considered for stability of the model. For the closed loop, these inequalities, which become nonlinear in the unknowns, are converted to LMIs by a suitable variable substitution. The controller’s optimization is achieved by minimizing the upper bound of the state feedback vector’s norm. As a result of this optimization, the controller gain is reduced, which reduces the effect of the disturbance input to the system. We study the stability of the closed loop system and the nonlinear transient performance using the state feedback. We demonstrate that the proposed controller’s transient performance is superior to that of a nonoptimized controller when compared to a conventional proportional-derivative controller. The designed controller has a norm that is about five orders lower than that obtained without optimization while still providing acceptable transient performance.