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Division Spotlight
Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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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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.
Jeremy Bittan
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 194 | Number 8 | August-September 2020 | Pages 771-781
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2020.1743576
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During a loss-of-coolant-accident (LOCA) transient in a pressurized water reactor (PWR), water from the primary circuit is lost at the break. PWR designs are equipped with safety systems (SS) such as safety injection or accumulators to inject water into the primary circuit and prevent the core from being degraded. Depending on the size, position, and orientation of the break, a part of the safety system injection (SSI) into the primary circuit will be lost at the break. This parameter has a significant influence on the time the core uncovers in case the SS are lost. MAAP5.04 enables users to define the part of SSI that is lost at the break. Apart from a double-ended–break LOCA transient, users struggle to define precisely the part of SSI lost at the break, but this choice can have an important impact on the transient key event times. Thanks to its detailed equations and nodalization, the reference Code for Analysis of Thermal Hydraulics during an Accident of Reactor and safety Evaluation (CATHARE) enables one to evaluate the part of SSI lost at the break. Numerous CATHARE calculations have been performed taking into account different break sizes, positions, and orientations to determine the part of SSI lost at the break in each case. A metamodel has been created from the constituted database and implemented in EDF MAAP5.04. This paper also presents the impact of these improvements on LOCA transients where SS are lost.