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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
November 17–21, 2024
Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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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Latest News
NRC restores expiration dates for renewed Turkey Point licenses
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced this week that it has restored the expiration dates of the Turkey Point nuclear power plant's units 3 and 4 subsequent license renewals (SLR) to July 19, 2052, and April 10, 2053, respectively.
Abdullah S. Alomari, N. Kumar, K. L. Murty (NCSU)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 1020-1028
Advanced materials are needed to withstand higher operating temperatures for longer service life providing more efficient, safe, and reliable structures for next generation nuclear reactors. Alloy 709 is an advanced austenitic stainless steel with excellent mechanical properties that make it a preferred candidate structural material for Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR) which has higher technology readiness level for deployment. Tensile tests of Alloy 709 were carried out in a wide range of temperatures 25–800 °C and nominal strain rates of 10-5–10-3 s-1 to investigate the serrated flow behavior which is a manifestation of dynamic strain ageing (DSA). Serrations in the Alloy 709 were found to occur at two temperature regimes identified as low temperature serrated flow (LT-SF) at 200–350 °C and high temperature serrated flow (HT-SF) at 350–700 °C separated by mild serrations or smooth flow depending on the strain rate. Different methods for the determination of activation energy for the serrated flow were employed that yielded values of 106 kJ/mole and 194 kJ/mole for the LT-SF and HT-SF regimes respectively. Based on the activation energy values and the dependence of the critical strain on the temperature and strain rate, diffusion of interstitial atoms such as nitrogen and/or carbon have been suggested to be responsible for serrated flow in the LT-SF regime while the diffusion of substitutional atoms such as chromium is responsible for DSA in the HT-SF regime. Other manifestations of DSA in the Alloy 709 are observed including peaks and/or plateaus in flow stresses, negative strain rate sensitivity and planar substructure in deformed samples at intermediate temperatures. However, no loss in ductility is found to occur in the DSA regime in the Alloy 709. The results are discussed and compared with relevant austenitic stainless steels used for SFR applications.