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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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August 2025
Nuclear Technology
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July 2025
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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.
Muhammad R. Abdussami, Aditi Verma
Nuclear Technology | Volume 211 | Number 6 | June 2025 | Pages 1256-1281
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2024.2386491
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear energy and renewables, both being low-carbon energy sources that are likely to play an increasingly larger role in energy systems of the future, are increasingly being considered from an integrated standpoint. However, the deployment of baseload nuclear reactors as part of such integrated systems may present some challenges in long-term planning, such as surplus energy generation, inflexibility, and increased energy storage requirements. On the other hand, flexible advanced nuclear reactors can be utilized to tackle the limitations of baseload reactors, such as inflexibility of load-following and high initial capital cost.
This paper aims to investigate from techno-economic aspects whether energy modelers should use a flexible nuclear reactor model, specifically a small modular pressurized water reactor technology, or a baseload reactor model of comparable size in long-term integrated nuclear renewable (NR) integrated energy system planning simulations. We mathematically develop an off-grid NR integrated system in a MATLAB environment. An advanced small modular reactor is incorporated in this study and is operated in a baseload and flexible mode of operation for comparative analysis. Two metaheuristic optimization algorithms, pelican optimization algorithm and particle swarm optimization, are employed to obtain and validate the optimal configurations of two different NR systems (e.g. baseload reactor system and flexible reactor system). A sensitivity analysis is conducted to reinforce the key research findings.
The results indicate that a flexible nuclear reactor reduces the total annualized cost by a very small amount (roughly 2%) and the energy storage sizing by around 3% for NR integrated system planning, compared to a baseload reactor. This study provides insights into the operational assumptions (e.g. baseload or flexible operation) to consider during the modeling of a long-term planning problem of for NR integrated systems.