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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.
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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
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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.
A. Nobile, P. Gobby, A. M. Schwendt, W. P. Steckle, J. K. Hoffer, D. T. Goodin, G. E. Besenbruch, K. R. Schultz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 39 | Number 2 | March 2001 | Pages 684-691
Chamber Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A11963318
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Future inertial fusion energy (IFE) power plants will have a Target Fabrication Facility (TFF) that must produce approximately 500,000 targets per day. To achieve a relatively low cost of electricity, the cost to produce these targets will need to be less than approximately $0.25 per target. In this paper the status on the development of concepts for a TFF to produce targets for a heavy ion fusion (HIF) reactor, such as HYLIFE II, and a laser direct drive fusion reactor such as Sombrero, is discussed. The baseline target that is produced in the HIF TFF is similar to the close-coupled indirect drive target designed by Callahan-Miller and Tabak at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. This target consists of a cryogenic hohlraum that is made of a metal case and a variety of metal foams and metal-doped organic foams. The target contains a DT-filled CH capsule. The baseline direct drive target is the design developed by Bodner and coworkers at Naval Research Laboratory. HIF targets can be filled with DT before or after assembly of the capsule into the hohlraum. Assembly of targets before filling allows assembly operations to be done at room temperature, but tritium inventories are much larger due to the large volume that the hohlraum occupies in the fill system. Assembly of targets cold after filling allows substantial reduction in tritium inventory, but this requires assembly of targets at cryogenic temperature. A model being developed to evaluate the tritium inventories associated with each of the assembly and fill options indicates that filling targets before assembling the capsule into the hohlraum, filling at temperatures as high as possible, and reducing dead-volumes in the fill system as much as possible offers the potential to reduce tritium inventories to acceptable levels. Use of enhanced DT ice layering techniques, such as infrared layering can reduce tritium inventories significantly by reducing the layering time and therefore the number of capsules being layered. Current processes for fabrication of ICF capsules can most likely be easily scaled up to produce capsules at rates needed for an IFE plant.