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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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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.
R. M. Carroll, J. G. Morgan, R. B. Perez, O. Sisman
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 38 | Number 2 | November 1969 | Pages 143-155
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE69-A19519
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two cylindrical specimens of UO2 were irradiated in the Oak Ridge Research Reactor at temperatures up to 1700°C. Both specimens were of natural enrichment uranium (0.7% 235U) but one specimen was a single crystal and the other had a fine-grain microstructure. The fission-gas release from these specimens were affected by the fission density, temperature, burnup, grain growth, and the cracking of the specimens. Concentrations of fission gas produced high local stresses which contributed to the cracking of the specimens. Spherical specimens of enriched (48.7% 235U), fused, polycrystalline UO2 were irradiated to study the effect of burnup and high fission density. The spherical specimens began breaking at 1.9% uranium burnup and continued to break into smaller fragments as the burnup continued to 4.6% uranium burnup. The primary cause of breaking was fission-gas pressure within the spheres rather than thermal stresses. Equiaxed grain growth in UO2 occurs at ∼1650°C and fission gas, normally trapped in a grain boundary, can then migrate along the mobile grain boundary. The fission-gas release rate is thus greatly increased during the time of grain growth but the increase in grain size has little influence on the subsequent gas release at lower temperatures. By the defect-trap model, the effect of an increase in fission density is to create more traps within the fuel and at the same time to generate more fission gas. Thus, although the concentration of fission gas within the specimen is proportional to the fission density (at equilibrium conditions) the escape rate of the fission gas is not proportional to the concentration, unless the fission density is very low. When the fission density is very high, however, the fission tracks will intersect and the fission gas may escape as if through interconnected diffusion pipes. The fission-gas release was found to increase exponentially with fission density above 1014 fissions/(cm3 sec).
