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Division Spotlight
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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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Fusion Science and Technology
May 2025
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.
Seonghee Hong, Myunghyun Kim
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 6 | August 2019 | Pages 466-478
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1609820
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To enhance the practical application of a fusion-driven subcritical reactor, a system with constant fusion power by online feeding of molten salt fuel was designed. The system satisfies multiple purposes including waste transmutation, tritium breeding (TB), and energy multiplication (EM) through constant fusion power. All neutronic calculations were performed by SERPENT2.1.29 with the ENDF/B-VII.0 neutron cross-section library in order to simulate the online-feeding process.
A constant k-eff is maintained by the amount of the feeding being larger than the amount of the removed fission products. However, system performance is significantly improved by just reducting the reactivity swing with the feeding. Compared to a once-through cycle (OTC), the performance of TB and EM is significantly improved as the feeding rate increases. However, there is no deep burning effect like the OTC for waste transmutation.
The performance of waste transmutation is changed in the feeding scenarios. For the scenario with a high plutonium ratio, transmutation with plutonium is increased. On the other hand, for the feeding scenario with a high minor actinide ratio, transuranic waste is burned. However, the transmutation performance is degraded due to a low fission-to-capture ratio.
