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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
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
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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May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Da?istan ?ahin (NIST), Kirill Stakhovsky (Univ of Maryland), Omar Cavazos (Univ of North Texas)
Proceedings | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technolgies (NPIC&HMIT 2019) | Orlando, FL, February 9-14, 2019 | Pages 142-149
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) hosts a 20 MW, heavy water moderated nuclear reactor, namely the National Bureau of Standards Reactor (NBSR). The NBSR control system is not equipped with a fully digital control console and the safety system of the reactor remains entirely analog. The NBSR was licensed in 1967 and modifications were implemented on the reactor console since then. Newly installed instruments have been either analog or a hybrid of digital and analog technology. Recently, the required number of digital interfaces to be installed onto the console increased rapidly. This is partly due to the lack of available replacements for analog meters, but more importantly to improve safety, operations, and maintenance. Human Machine Interface (HMI) design is a key component of these upgrades and is important for the operational performance of the NSBR reactor. There is a requirement to continuously evaluate human performance analysis while making these changes and provide operator training. Special training sessions are necessary with regards to operator actions imminent to accidents as analyzed in the updated safety analysis requirements document. The goals of this project were to allow operators to train and become familiar with the NBSR console and to allow operators to participate in safety training that would not be practical otherwise. Use of the Virtual Reality (VR) for design optimization and reactor operator training provides a modular and effective environment. To accomplish training, the VR simulator is configured to display real-time or historic-play-back data readily collected on a relational database. Computer generated data is used to simulate plant conditions during analyzed accident scenarios.