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Meeting 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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
August 2025
Nuclear Technology
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July 2025
Latest News
The U.S. Million Person Study of Low-Dose-Rate Health Effects
There is a critical knowledge gap regarding the health consequences of exposure to radiation received gradually over time. While there is a plethora of studies on the risks of adverse outcomes from both acute and high-dose exposures, including the landmark study of atomic bomb survivors, these are not characteristic of the chronic exposure to low-dose radiation encountered in occupational and public settings. In addition, smaller cohorts have limited numbers leading to reduced statistical power.
J. Haroon, E. Nichita
Nuclear Technology | Volume 211 | Number 4 | April 2025 | Pages 768-776
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2357917
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Operating CANDU reactors have the potential to produce significant quantities of molybdenum-99 (99Mo) because of their ability to be refueled online, high thermal neutron flux, and fuel design flexibility. A new molybdenum-producing fuel bundle (MPB), previously designed for CANDU reactors, has as its principal attribute that it is neutronically and thermal hydraulically equivalent to the standard 37-element fuel bundle typically used in CANDU reactors. Given that the typical irradiation time for MPBs is 20 days while the typical refueling period for a channel is on average 6 months, the refueling strategy needs to be adjusted to accommodate the shorter irradiation time of MPBs.
This study evaluates a new refueling strategy suitable for employing the new MPBs in the core. A full-core, three-dimensional model is constructed in the diffusion code DONJON, and a fueling strategy for achieving the desired weekly yield of 99Mo is developed. The adequacy of the proposed refueling scheme is evaluated using a series of time-average calculations, which show that a small increase in the core reactivity (<0.4 mk) can be expected when irradiating a set of four MPBs in three different fuel channels in the inner region of the core. The small increase in the core reactivity can be managed by slightly increasing the discharge burnup in the non-MPB-bearing fuel channels, thus also improving slightly the fuel utilization in the reactor.