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The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.
S. G. Bankoff, S. H. Han
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 85 | Number 4 | December 1983 | Pages 387-395
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE83-A18385
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A necessary condition for a large-scale steam explosion in a core meltdown accident in the light water reactor is the formation of a coarsely predispersed mixture of molten “fuel” and water. Chapman-Jouguet diagrams for tin-water mixtures indicate that thermal detonations at supercritical pressures are possible only with relatively low initial void fractions (<0.15). The present calculations deal with a one-dimensional array of fuel particles falling steadily from the lower tie plate into the lower plenum pool. Radiative heat fluxes turn out to be several times larger than the convective fluxes. Both homogeneous and separated flow models for the steam-water flow relative to the particles are formulated. In both cases the void fraction rapidly rises to above 0.85, and the particle volume fraction also decreases sharply, indicating rapid bed dispersal. This confirms a simpler calculation by Henry and Fauske of water removal from the heating zone, looked upon as a subcooled critical heat flux calculation. It would therefore appear to be very difficult to have an efficient steam explosion on a scale large enough to threaten the containment.