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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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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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.
Paul W. Fisher
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 2 | March 1992 | Pages 794-799
Material; Storage and Processing | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29845
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The tritium proof-of-principle (TPOP) experiment was designed and built by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to demonstrate the formation and acceleration of the world's first tritium pellets for fueling of future fusion reactors. Many parameters measured during the course of the experiment have been used to evaluate the physical properties of solid tritium. Pellet size was measured as a function of equilibrium fill pressure. A model was developed to predict this information from values of thermal conductivity, vapor pressure, and density reported in the literature. Good agreement between theory and experiment was found for both deuterium and tritium pellets. Evaluation of breakaway pressure data for deuterium pellets indicates that the shear strength of deuterium is about equal to its ultimate tensile strength. Tritium shear strength appears to be about twice that of deuterium at temperatures around 8 K. The reduction in pellet diameter due to barrel erosion for deuterium was about twice that for tritium pellets at a given velocity. This was also indicative of the greater strength of tritium relative to deuterium.