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Division Spotlight
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
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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Nuclear Science and Engineering
June 2025
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
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.
Shahram Sharafat, Aaron Aoyama, Nasr Ghoniem, Brian Williams
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 1 | July 2011 | Pages 203-207
Divertor & High Heat Flux Components | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-293
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A flat-plate He-cooled divertor would provide a flat surface facing the plasma, would minimize the number of otherwise complex sub-modules needed to cool large areas, and could greatly reduce the complexity of the coolant manifold systems.We recently designed and manufactured a unique flat-plate multichannel refractory metal heat exchanger (HX) that employs open-cell refractory foam to enhance heat transfer from the heated plate to the helium coolant. The structural material of the flat-plate HX box (102 mm wide and 165 mm long) is powder metallurgy molybdenum. Three flat-plate HX boxes were fabricated, two with a heated surface plate made of 4-mm thick Mo, TZM, and one 3-mm thick W. Four supply- and five return ducts, each 4.8 mm wide by 61 mm long run parallel underneath the heated plate. A thin sheet of Mo-foam (~2 mm × 70 mm × 80 mm; H/W/L) is sandwiched between the ducts and the heated plate. Advantages of using foam are detailed in a separate paper in these proceedings. The supply ducts push helium up towards the heated plate and then circumferentially through the foam into the neighboring return ducts. Key to optimizing the design was achieving uniform helium flow upwards to the heated plate along the entire length of the supply ducts, while simultaneously minimizing end-effects due to the short active duct length (~80 mm). A series of geometric features were designed to obtain relatively uniform flow distributions throughout the HX box. Here we report on the final design based on CFD analysis and thermo-structural finite element.