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Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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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
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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.
D. N. Bridges, J. D. Clement
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 47 | Number 4 | April 1972 | Pages 421-434
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE72-A22434
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This investigation involved a theoretical and experimental study of space-dependent reactor transfer functions with temperature feedback. The reactor transfer function under investigation was the neutron flux response to an input perturbation or source. An existing theoretical model, known as the complex source method, was extended to include temperature feedback effects and the resultant equations were programmed for a model of the Georgia Tech Research Reactor (GTRR). Spatial transfer function measurements were made in the GTRR using an in-core pile oscillator employing a pseudo-random binary sequence. Several detector locations were investigated for both zero-power and at-power (900 kW) conditions over a frequency range from 4 × 10−4 to 8.5 Hz. Data were taken and stored on magnetic tape using two PDP-8 computers and a magnetic tape unit. The theoretical calculations and the experimental results agreed quite closely. Temperature feedback effects for the GTRR were observed to occur at frequencies of 2 × 10−2 Hz and lower, and to become quite pronounced below 1 × 10−3 Hz. Spatial effects were observed to be significant only for frequencies above 1 Hz. The agreement of the calculations with the experimental results served to validate the theoretical model.