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Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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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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Become a knowledge manager at UWC 2024
The American Nuclear Society is now accepting applications for knowledge managers to work during the 2024 Utility Working Conference and Vendor Technology Expo. This year’s UWC, “Nuclear Momentum: Advancing Our Clean Energy Future,” will be held August 4–7, 2024, at the JW Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort on Marco Island, Fla.=
Luciano Burgazzi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 167 | Number 3 | September 2009 | Pages 339-347
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9074
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper focuses on the assessment of the hazards and safety critical areas and equipment related to the integral circulation experiments to be conducted on a molten lead-bismuth-eutectic-alloy facility, the CIRCulation Experiment (CIRCE) facility in Brasimone, Italy, for heavy-liquid-metal technology development. A well-structured failure mode and effect analysis procedure, customary in risk assessment studies, has been adopted to address the task, in order to obtain a complete picture of all the failure modes pertaining to the system, to determine its effects on the system and to classify them according to their severity.The analysis identified a major hazard relative to the facility in the experimental configuration to be the risk related to the water-lead-bismuth reaction, although with a very low probability, with the potential for steam explosion within the main vessel. This conclusion necessitates additional research on the concerned phenomena, both at the experimental and analytical levels, the results of which should help analysts quantify the risk and designers take the necessary provisions to cope with this risk.The analysis provides a set of accident initiators, that is, events postulated to initiate an accident situation, together with the total frequency and the list of component failures that could induce it. For any of them a deterministic analysis is suggested in order to verify the plant behavior with respect to accident transients, in terms of the parameters that can have an impact on accident analysis and modeling.