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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.
H. Ludewig, S. Mughabghab, O. Lazareth, K. Perkins, E. Schmidt, J.R. Powell
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 20 | Number 4 | December 1991 | Pages 747-752
Space Nuclear Power/Propulsion | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A11946931
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP) unit capable of propelling a manned vehicle to MARS will be required to have a value of α (kg/kWe) which is less than five. In order to meet this goal the reactor mass, and thus its contribution to the value of α will have to be minimized. In this paper a candidate for such a reactor is described. It consists of a gas cooled Particle Bed Reactor (PBR), with specially chosen materials which allow it to operate at an exit temperature of approximately 2000 K. One of the unique features of a PBR is the direct cooling of particulate fuel by the working fluid. This feature allows for high power densities, highest possible gas exit temperatures, for a given fuel temperature and because of the thin particle bed a low pressure drop. The PBR's described in this paper will have a ceramic moderator (Be2C), ZrC coated fuel particles and a carbon/carbon hot frit. All the reactors will be designed with sufficient fissile loading to operate at full power for seven years. The burn up possible with particulate fuel is approximately 30%-50%. These reactor designs achieve a value of α less than unity in the power range of interest (5 MWe).