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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
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.
Shigeru Akiyama, Shigeyasu Amada
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 23 | Number 4 | July 1993 | Pages 426-434
Technical Paper | Material Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST93-A30135
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Structural ceramics are attracting attention in the development of nuclear fusion reactors because they have excellent wear- and heat-resistant characteristics. However, in some applications, they will be exposed to very high temperature and high-heat-flux environments. These ceramics are also subjected to thermal loadings that change rapidly with time. Therefore, it is important to investigate their thermal shock characteristics. A new approach to evaluate the thermal shock resistance of structural ceramics is based on laser pulse irradiation on the ceramic surface. The temperature and thermal stress distributions of cylindrical ceramics under irradiation by laser beams are discussed by using the MARC finite element computer code with arbitrary quadrilateral axisymmetric ring elements. The relationship between the spot diameter of the laser beam and the maximum compressive thermal stress is derived for various power densities of the laser beams. A critical fracture curve is obtained from these relationships that can specify a critical power density for a given laser beam spot diameter. The irradiation experiments are done on a machinable ceramic by using a CO2 laser. Finally, theoretical results are compared with experimental ones. Both results show good agreements. Consequently, this method can be a new standard thermal shock test instead of the water quench test that has been used widely.