Special Section: ICONE-26

Abstract

This Special Section in this issue of the ASME Journal of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science is dedicated to selected papers from the 26th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE-26) held in London, United Kingdom, during July 22–26, 2018. The selected ICONE-26 papers were revised and reviewed to meet the journal standards and requirements.The ICONE conference is a premier global annual conference on nuclear engineering, science, and technology that has a quarter century history and is organized by the Nuclear Engineering Division (NED) of the ASME, the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers (JSME), and the Chinese Nuclear Society (CNS). The first conference, ICONE-1, was held in 1991 in Tokyo with the JSME and ASME as sponsors. In 2005, the Chinese Nuclear Society (CNS) formally joined as the third sponsor and hosted ICONE-13 in Beijing. The ICONE-series of conferences are global significant events of choice for nuclear professionals to stay technically current, follow industry trends, promote professional development, and provide a platform for information exchange and dissemination. The contributions from industry, government, and academia lead to the success of ICONE as the quality and number of the technical presentations steadily increased. In addition to the archival paper publications, ICONE assists the nuclear industry in developing future generations of nuclear professionals to meet industry needs. This is achieved through an excellent student paper competition program that includes a significant number of students from around the globe, supported and partially funded by the conference sponsors (60 finalists in total consisting of 15 students from each of the following four regions: North America, Europe, China, and Japan with Asia at large).Based on the turnout and the comments received from many of the nearly 900 registered participants, the 26th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE-26), held in London, UK, was a great success. In total, 57% of the participants were from academia, 29% from the industry, and 11% from government. Geographically, the largest part of participants came from China (45%), European Union (20%, including 7% from UK), Japan (16%), USA and Canada (11%), and South Korea (6%). More than 670 final technical papers and 760 presentations were made during the ICONE-26 conference from countries worldwide in a total of 15 technical tracks. These statistics show emphatically that ICONE presents a truly worldwide view on Nuclear Power, and there is no better venue to express viewpoints or share information with likeminded professionals.The ICONE-26 organizers invited the authors to submit their revised and augmented papers for journal publication consideration. The selected final papers presented in this special section cover a wide area of topics in nuclear science and technology. Reflecting the state of the nuclear industry, there are several papers dealing with analysis, simulation, management, experiments, context evaluation, and consequences of postulated design basis and severe accidents. This special issue also contains papers related to research and development challenges into advanced reactors, fusion technology, decontamination and decommissioning, radiation protection, and other related topics.The guest editors want to warmly thank the authors and reviewers for their efforts and support in producing this journal issue. During the editorial process, the papers went through the rigorous peer-review process. The ICONE-based special issue or section of the Journal of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science is now already traditional and we hope to continue the journal publication of selected augmented papers from the future ICONE conferences. The guest editors would like to extend their thanks to the editorial board of the journal and, in particular, the editor, Dr. Igor Pioro, for their support during the preparation of this special section. Finally, we hope that the readers enjoy this special ICONE-26 based section.Guoqiang Wang, Ph.D. ICONE-26 Conference Chair Fellow ASME Westinghouse Electric Company LLC, Pittsburgh, PA 15235 e-mail: WangG@Westinghouse.comShripad Revankar, Ph.D. ICONE-26 Technical Program Chair Fellow ASME School of Nuclear Engineering,Purdue University,West Lafayette, IN 47907e-mail: shripad@purdue.eduLeon Cizelj, Ph.D. ICONE-26 Conference Co-Chair Fellow ASME Reactor Engineering Division, Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana 1000, Slovenia e-mail: Leon.Cizelj@ijs.siRobert Stakenborghs ICONE-26 Steering Committee Chair Fellow ASME ILD, Inc., Baton Rouge, LA 70808 e-mail: bob@ildpower.comJovica Riznic, Ph.D. ICONE-26 Organizing Committee Co-Chair Fellow ASME Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Ottava, ON K1P 59S, Canada e-mail: jovica.riznic@canada.ca