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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.
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2024 ANS Winter Conference and Expo
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Orlando, FL|Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld
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Latest News
Argonne’s NSTF: Active testing of passive cooling
A facility at Argonne National Laboratory has been simulating nuclear reactor cooling systems under a wide range of conditions since the 1980s. Its latest task, described by Argonne in an August 13 news release, is testing the performance of passive safety systems for new reactor designs.
Designed as a half-scale model of a real reactor system, Argonne’s Natural Convection Shutdown Heat Removal Test Facility (NSTF) is used for large-scale experimental testing of the performance of passive safety systems, which are designed to remove decay heat using natural forces including gravity and heat convection. Those tests yield benchmarking data qualified to the level of National Quality Assurance-1 (NQA-1) that is shared with vendors and regulators to validate computational models and guide licensing of new reactors and components.
Om Prakash Joneja, P. Scherrer, J.-P. Schneeberger
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 24 | Number 2 | September 1993 | Pages 180-187
Technical Paper | Blanket Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST93-A30224
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
At the LOTUS facility, an extremely efficient online detector system, based on the detection of the charged particles associated with the 6Li(n, α)t reaction, has been designed, fabricated, and tested. The system offers an interesting possibility for directly measuring the tritium production rate (TPR) at any experimental site. The charged particles emitted in opposite directions can be detected by a double parallel plate ionization chamber (DIC) configuration. The real events are identified by employing a coincidence circuit. The complete fabrication details, testing under different conditions, measurement of TPR, and its comparison with the liquid-scintillation method (LSM) are detailed. The DIC response to thermal neutrons agrees well with the theoretical calculations. Also, the detector system is insensitive to a contact gamma dose rate of 1.3 rem/h. The direct TPR measurements and the salient feature of higher efficiency in comparison with the LSM are demonstrated. The TPR determined by both methods are in excellent agreement.