Personal reflection – submit on slack as a private message to Raluca. Due: Fri, 5/11 by 5pm.

The purpose of this assignment is to reflect on your learning process.

(a) Please explain your learning process. How did the project come together, in its three parts: analysis, communication, engagement.

(b) How did you contribute to the group project, what were your strengths, what are the areas that you would like to better develop?

If you’re interested in the source file for laser-cutting a map of the U.S. with operating nuclear plants, and national parks, you may find it here.

If you would like to generate maps with other information related to nuclear energy production and nuclear fuel, you may find a compilation of datasets here, on these topics:

• nuclear reactors (world & US)
• mining, conversion, enrichment, decommissioning (world & US)
• fuel reprocessing (world & US)
• radioactive waste management (world & US)
• decommissioned plants, accidents (world & US)

All content on nuclearenergy.edublogs.org falls under the Creative Commons copyright Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You may read the copyright license here. Share the knowledge, share the content, give credit for it.

For additional bonus points, you may take a 24-hour take-home exam on material relevant to one or several of the following assignments:

1. Assignment 2 topic: Up to 18 points (Pigford Chapter 5 + secular equilibrium “Ahn_Course Notes” page 9 in #ne571-readings-notes, Feb 12th.)
2. Assignment 3 topic: Up to 25 points (Tsoufanidis Chapter 2 & Chapter 3)
3. Assignment 4 topic: Up to 38 points (Tsoufanidis Chapter 7)
4. Assignment 5 topic: Up to 33 points (Tsoufanidis Chapter 9 & 10)

The exam would be in the form of one problem per topic. You may take the exam anytime between April 16th and April 27th. I will hand it to you at the end of class and ask you to turn it in 24 hours later. You may use the text-book and assigned readings. You may not collaborate or discuss information relevant to the exam with anyone.

Related post: NE 571 | Exam Review

Content of the Report & Final Presentation

1. Project scope and functional requirements.
2. System description.
3. Supporting analysis: methodology, inputs, results.
4. Description of the prototype you created.
5.  Uncertainties and future work.

Structure of the Report

1. Title Page
2. Copyright, if all of the authors choose to keep the report and website material public.
3. Executive Summary
4. Report Chapters
   1. The first chapter must define (1) the project goals, and (2) the functional requirements.
   2. One chapter should be a prototype description. Briefly describe here also the evolution of the prototype – what was changed from one iteration to another and why.
   3. The last chapter must include:
      1. How your system meets each of the functional requirements.
      2. A summary of the overall product of your project.
      3. Limitations of the current work, and recommendations for future work.
5. References
6. Appendices
   1. All calculations: methodology, inputs and assumptions need to be fully transparent so that the work is reproducible by the readers of the report.
   2. All review comments
   3. All material supporting the content. For example, meeting memos are not directly supporting of content.

Structure of the Final Presentation

•  May 11th, 10.05am-12:05 pm, 20 minutes per team.
• Bring your prototype.
• You may use slides and/or hand-outs. If you use handouts, I can make the necessary copies for you.
• This is your chance to showcase your work. If everybody on your team agrees, you may choose to invite colleagues and friends who are not in the class, to attend your presentation.

1. Scope and functional requirements.
2. Description of system.
3. Showcase the prototype.
4. A list of analyses that supported the design decisions.
5. An example analysis: methodology, inputs, results, uncertainties.
6. Show how your system meets each of the functional requirements.

 

Exam format – here is a summary of what was discussed in class, on 3/20:

• The exam will have two parts:
  • A timed section of the exam that you will complete in class: 20-30 min section, with questions of the level of depth similar to the in-class quizzes.
  • A take-home section, that requires you to perform analysis of the level of depth similar to home-work problems and in-class discussions.
  • You will have 24 hours to complete the take-home part, and you will have to submit it as a pdf, through slack (private message to me).
  • Your response to the take-home part will be limited to two pages, 11pt. font, Times New Roman, including figures, tables, equations.
• No equation sheet is allowed on the in-class portion of the exam. I will provide you with any equations that you may need.
  • If you want to know if a certain equation or concept might be provided to you, or if you’re expected to know it as a fundamental concept, please ask me on Slack in a general channel, and I can help clarify.

Pigford Chapter 5, Uranium + “Ahn_Course Notes” page 9 (#ne571-readings-notes, Feb 12th.), secular equilibrium. – HW 2

1. Concepts: Radioactive decay series of U. Secular equilibrium.
2. Calculate isotopic abundances of elements in secular equilibrium.
3. Calculate activity.
4. Convert among masses of U, U3O8 etc.
5. Perform mass balances on a flow diagram.
6. Estimate ore requirements based on ore quality/grade.
7. Estimate activity of and volumes of mill tailings.
8. Concepts: uranium concentration, purification, conversion.

Tsoufanidis Chapter 2: Resources, Mining and Milling – HW 3

1. Exploration methods
2. Mining methods and milling tails management.

Tsoufanidis Chapter 3: Conversion and Enrichment + Larmarsh figures on p. 203, 204, 206 (#ne571-readings-notes, Feb 14th.) – HW 3

1. Concepts: purification, conversion, enrichment methods
2. Perform mass balance on the enrichment process: feed rates, tail rates etc.
3. Calculate SWU requirements. Also read Lamarsh (see above).
4. Perform mass balance on flow charts.
5. Calculate enrichment level from a given cascade, if the separation factor (alpha) for each stage is given.
6. Enrichment tails management.

Tsoufanidis Chapter 7: Reprocessing and Recycling – HW 4

1. Concepts: PUREX, pyrometalurgical separation, material accountability.
2. Create, read, perform mass balance on various fuel cycles and separation schemes. Calculate waste stream content and volume. Calculate resource utilization.
3. Calculate SWU savings.
4. Concepts: MOX, recycled U, recycled Pu, recycled minor actinides (MA)

Tsoufanidis Chapter 9 & 10: HLW, LLW, Decommissioning – HW 5

1. WPA, and LLW Policy Act
2. BRC
3. Decay heat and radioactivity
4. Disposal methods of solid and liquid HLW
5. Transportation of HLW and LLW & cask classification
6. LLW classification
7. Decommissioning methods
8. Decommissioning methods & radioactive materials involved.

Tsoufanidis Chapter 8: Economics and Markets – HW 6

1. Time value of money
2. Levelized cost of electricity
3. Cash flow
4. Leasing or buying nuclear fuel

Ahn Chapter 3: Severe accidents- Take Home Quiz 1  Take-home Quiz 2 Take-home Quiz 3

• not covered by the exam

Ahn Chapter 9: Safety Culture – Take Home Quiz 1 Take-home Quiz 2 Take-home Quiz 3

1. What is a safety culture?
2. What is cultural conditioning?
3. Personal dedication and accountability of all individuals
4. Complex systems (vs. complicated systems)
5. The conventional approach to risk assessment
6. Defense in depth
7. Cultural Risk Analysis

Taebi and Roeser Article: Ethics – Take-home Quiz 2

1. Concepts: intergenerational justice, social experiment, ethical notions of risk, emotion, value judgements, compassion vs intellectual capacity to decide, technocratic pitfall vs. populist pitfall.

Media: John Oliver Video

1. What aspects of the video are correct, based on the information you studied for this exam?
2. What aspects of the video are incorrect, based on the information you studied for this exam?

Media: Into Eternity Film

1. What are the responsibilities of the current generation, as defined by different people in the documentary?
2. What are the arguments made for deciding whether the responsibilities are being met or not?
3. What are the arguments made around agreeing upon what the responsibilities of the current and the future generations should be towards HLW?

As engineers, it’s extremely important to be effective at building teams. An important learning objective of the design class is to build a team that effectively takes advantage of the diverse skills of each member and supports each member in productively contributing to the team. An effective team is also one that makes the project a good learning opportunity for everyone on the team. This exercise is aimed at reflecting on the progress towards these team-development, and at helping you set goals for getting further in this goal by the end of the semester.

We’re very lucky to have Chris Castro as a guest lecturer on this topic. Chris is an expert-facilitator and educational developer, and the Assistant Director for Madison Teaching and Learning.

Personal reflection and peer evaluation – submit on slack as a private message to Raluca. Due: Fri, 3/23 by 5pm.

The purpose of this assignment is to reflect on your learning process and on the effectiveness of your team.

(a) Each student, individually, will write a personal reflection. Your reflection will explain what you learned during your work on the group project (both on design and during review). Please explain your learning process – how does the project come together?

(b) Each student will evaluate their performance in the group. How did you contribute to the group project, what were your strengths, what are the areas that you would like to better develop?

(c) Each student will evaluate everyone else in the group. Assign a percentage of the contribution to the group project by each student in the group. The total needs to add up to 100%. 

Please take 5 minutes to fill out this anonymous mid-semester survey. Thank you!

Due: Fri 3/23 by 8am

A. Economics – Tsoufanidis

• Reading: Chapter 8
• Problems: 8.1 (5pt), 8.2(5pt), 8.6 (5pt), 8.7 (5pt), 8.8 (5pt), 8.10 (10 pt).

B. Decommissioning and accidents:

Please represent on a world map the following two datasets for input into ArcGIS.

1. 7pt. Nuclear plants in various stages of decommissioning. Indicate reator type, date of shut-down, and status. Data source: IAEA 2004. Optional additional resources: IAEA PRIS, NRC Info-Finder, NRC Datasets
2. 3 pt. Nuclear accidents and their INES rating. For Fukushima, show the 20-mile radius around the plant (this was the shelter in place radius). For  Chernobyl, show the 17-radius of the exclusion zone.

Display the map on your blog, and answer the following questions:

1. What patterns do you see in your spatial data that are surprising? – 5 pt
2. What additional data would you collect to make this an informative map to nuclear engineering students about decommissioning and nuclear accidents? – 5 pt.
3. Bonus points (up to 15 pts): For the plants in the US, indicate the type of decommissioning (SAFSTOR or DECON), the duration of decommissioning period and the (expected) year of completion of decommissioning, and the reactor type. Information available here: NRC Datasets. What patterns do you see? What additional data would you collect?

Resources: see  Assignment 5A+B post.

C. Final Project

I have posted the class final project assignment.

1. 5pt. Please form a team of 2, and submit the names on the team, and the topic of your final project. Note: submit this individually, on both of your blogs.
2. 1pt. What are the five deliverables for the project, as defined by the assignment? What questions do you have?
3. 1pt. What are the four other deadlines for the project (besides the present one for title definition)? What questions do you have about deadlines or the grading rubric?