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Aerospace Nuclear Science & Technology
Organized to promote the advancement of knowledge in the use of nuclear science and technologies in the aerospace application. Specialized nuclear-based technologies and applications are needed to advance the state-of-the-art in aerospace design, engineering and operations to explore planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, plus enhance the safety of air travel, especially high speed air travel. Areas of interest will include but are not limited to the creation of nuclear-based power and propulsion systems, multifunctional materials to protect humans and electronic components from atmospheric, space, and nuclear power system radiation, human factor strategies for the safety and reliable operation of nuclear power and propulsion plants by non-specialized personnel and more.
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.
S. A. Musa, B. Zhao, S. I. Abdel-Khalik, M. Yoda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 72 | Number 3 | October 2017 | Pages 306-311
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1333829
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experimental evaluation of the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of helium-cooled divertor concepts is important in developing commercial magnetic fusion energy (MFE). Although experimental studies of a variety of concepts have been performed at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GT) over the last decade, achieving prototypical steady-state incident heat fluxes of 10 MW/m2 remains a major challenge. As an alternative to heating the test section, this work presents an initial assessment of a “reversed heat flux approach” that cools the test modules (instead of heating them) with water to determine the heat transfer coefficients (HTC). This approach was pioneered by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in their initial studies of the helium-cooled modular divertor with multiple jets (HEMJ).
The objectives of this design study are to: 1) determine whether such a reversed heat flux approach can be used to experimentally study the thermal-hydraulic performance of helium-cooled divertor concepts, while minimizing safety and operational issues associated with the extremely high temperatures (>1200°C) reached when testing at prototypical conditions (inlet conditions of 700°C and 10 MPa with an incident heat flux of 10 MW/m2), and 2) determine the design and operational parameters for a small-scale submerged water jet impingement cooling facility suitable for validating these numerical predictions. Numerical simulations were performed to determine the impinging-jet (water) mass flow rates required to remove heat fluxes up to 10 MW/m2 from a single HEMJ module at prototypical conditions (i.e., 700°C and 10 MPa). Initial axisymmetric simulations at water pressures up to 3 MPa suggest that a submerged single-phase impinging water jet at (300 K, 1 MPa) and = 3.5 kg/s can remove heat fluxes as great as 7.5 MW/m2 over a 2 cm diameter area.