A small tokamak-based fusion reactor can be attractive for actinide waste transmutation. Equilibrium concentrations of transuranium isotopes were estimated in a molten-salt based fusion transmutation reactor. Nuclear performance parameters were derived for two types of fusion-driven transmutation reactors: Pu-assisted and minor actinidesonly systems. The minor actinide-only burning system appea...

Several Member States of the Agency are considering introducing nuclear power to their energy mix for the first time. Although various technology options are available to these countries, selecting the most suitable nuclear reactor design requires not only a careful understanding of existing designs but also in-depth knowledge of country-specific needs, conditions and other considerations. To m...

Reactor control and safety systems are discussed with emphasis on safety considerations. Consideration is given to the importance of reactor characteristics, control and safety system characteristics, the operational program of the reactor, and credible accidents, in a determination of safety of operation. Ecperience with research reactor control and safety systems has led to the development of...

We present the status of the Angra Neutrino project, describing the development of an antineutrino detector aimed to monitor nuclear reactor activity. The experiment will take place at the Brazilian nuclear power plant located in Angra dos Reis. The Angra II reactor, with 4GW of thermal power, will be used as a source of antineutrinos. We expect to observe about one thousand events per day with...

nuclear power reactors are, in nature nonlinear and time varying. these characteristics must be considered, if large power variations occur in their working regime. in this paper a robust optimal gain scheduling controller for regulating the power of a nuclear reactor has been designed and simulated. the proposed controller is capable of regulating power levels in a wide power range (10% to 100...

This paper provides an introduction to the reactor analysis capabilities of the nuclear power reactor simulation tools that are being developed as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) Toolkit. The NEAMS Toolkit is an integrated suite of multi-physics simulation tools which leverage high-performance computing to reduce uncertainty in the...

Nuclear energy represents an important option for future energy supply, but the nuclear option could be jeopardized if severe reactor accidents, such as the ones at Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, were to continue to occur anywhere in the world. The PIUS (Process Inherent Ultimate Safety) reactor development effort is based on the conviction that future developments of nuclear energy for civili...

This paper summarizes a study of the implications of a technology-neutral regulation for advanced nuclear power plant designs and proposes a predominately rationalist approach to future nuclear plant regulations. The current body of regulations has been developed and evolved over the past 50 years with consideration of the knowledge and incidents experienced from operation of the Light Water Re...

A tabletop prototype of a new kind of nuclear reactor was demonstrated recently at the University of Bologna. This note addresses conceptual difficulties associated with the reported features of the device.