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Division Spotlight
Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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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Nuclear Technology
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.
T. P. Bernat, D. N. Bittner, S. Carter, B. Lawson, B. Motta, N. Petta, S. Phommarine
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 3 | April 2009 | Pages 343-348
Technical Paper | Eighteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A6961
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Indirect-drive ignition targets require that the hohlraums contain a gas of helium, hydrogen, or a mixture of the two. For this purpose, thin polyimide windows must cover the laser entrance holes and any other hohlraum ports. We have fabricated, assembled, and tested such windows and have measured their deflection as a function of applied pressure. We also measured the permeation of helium through them. We find that the deflection is approximately linear with pressure and that the two polyimide formulations that we tested are internally consistent as well as consistent with the earlier data of Powell and Lopez when scaled for geometry. We also find that the permeation is linear with pressure, despite the large increase in window area-to-thickness ratio that occurs during a measurement run that results from the window deflection and thinning as the pressure increases. The permeability of our spin-cast material is 0.65 × 10-13 sccs/cmPa, with an uncertainty of 15% (sccs = standard cubic centimeters per second).