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Division Spotlight
Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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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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.
S. A. Musa, D. S. Lee, S. I. Abdel-Khalik, M. Yoda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 77 | Number 7 | November 2021 | Pages 858-864
Student Paper Competition Selection | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1867475
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A single-finger unit of the Helium-Cooled Modular Divertor with Multiple Jets (HEMJ) with a plasma-facing surface (PFS) area of about 2 cm2 has been studied in a helium (He) loop at He mass flow rates ≤ 8 g/s and nearly prototypical conditions. Based on previous studies of the single finger of the HEMJ, our Georgia Institute of Technology group is planning to experimentally study larger divertors. Given that the HEMJ test section was heated with an induction heater and that it is impractical to scale this up to divertors with larger PFS areas, a reversed heat flux approach is being considered to measure heat transfer coefficients (HTCs). In this approach, the direction of the heat flux is reversed with water cooling and high-temperature He heating of the outer shell attached to the PFS.
This work presents an initial experimental and numerical evaluation of this approach for a single HEMJ finger. Experiments with brass and copper-chromium-zirconium outer shells were conducted at dimensionless He mass flow rates or Reynolds numbers Re = 1 × 104 to 4.7 × 104, an inlet pressure of 10 MPa, temperatures as great as 673 K, and maximum heat flux of 8.4 MW/m2. The experiments verify that the He-side HTCs are independent of the direction of the heat flux. The results agree well with previous Nusselt number correlation and pressure loss coefficients for the HEMJ obtained using the normal heating approach.