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Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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.
Kurt J. Boehm, A. R. Raffray, N. B. Alexander, D. T. Frey, D. T. Goodin
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 422-426
IFE Target Design | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8938
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A fluidized bed is being studied as a very promising method for mass production of IFE targets. Large beds could be filled with many targets to provide large-scale production, while a near-isothermal environment could be maintained in principle around each target (as required for smooth layering to meet the physics requirements on the ice characteristics) through the random movement and spin of individual targets within a precisely controlled gas stream. Concerns exist, however, including the effect of unbalanced spheres on the bed behavior and ultimately on the target thermal environment, as well as the possible damage of the target surface (in particular the thin high-Z coating).This effort includes developing a numerical fluidized bed model and conducting laboratory-scale companion experiments to help understand the cryogenic fluidized bed behavior. Key challenges in developing the model include the relative size of the spherical targets (~4.0 mm) compared to the size of the prototypic fluidized bed container (~26 mm in diameter), which is much larger than those found in conventional fluidized bed models and which calls for a different modeling approach. In addition, the behavior of unbalanced targets, which results from the initial D-T filling and freezing in the target production process, needs to be accounted for.This paper summarizes the development of this model, including the validation performed by comparing the model results to controlled lab-scale experiments. The goal is to use the model for parametric analysis to help determine the most promising state of operation to deliver large quantities of uniformly layered target shells. This will provide key pre-operational input to the prototypical experimental set-up, which is currently being built and which includes a high-pressure deuterium filling station in addition to the cryogenic fluidized bed operating at temperatures around 18 K.