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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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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
Cyra Neugebauer, Y. Hörstensmeyer, C. Day
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 3 | April 2020 | Pages 215-220
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1704139
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the main design drivers of the EU-DEMO fuel cycle is to avoid unnecessary hydrogen isotope separation. In the tritium plant, this implies a novel functionality for isotope rebalancing (IR) and protium removal (PR). The task of IR is to adjust the deuterium-tritium ratio by several percent gradually over time in order to establish the required fuel mixture composition before reinjection into the torus. The PR is needed to process and separate protium, which inevitably enters the system via outgassing or replacement reactions. The candidate technology for the IR/PR function is temperature swing absorption, which is based on anticyclical operation of two absorption columns with reversed isotope effects. In order to characterize the separation process, a new test rig has been designed and is currently being assembled. This paper describes the principle idea of the process, develops a model to predict the performance, and presents simulation results for a DEMO-relevant gas composition. Palladium and vanadium have been selected for the modeling. It is shown that at the end of one column tritium could be separated with 92.5% purity. At the other column, protium with 46.4% and deuterium with 44.8% purity could be removed. A subsequent parameter study showed that the ideal gas supply would be 40% of the total length of the column and that 22 was the optimal number of cycles before extraction.
