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Division Spotlight
Accelerator Applications
The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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.
Rohan Biwalkar, Kenneth Redus, Adam Stein, Sola Talabi
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 8 | August 2023 | Pages 2099-2116
Technical papers from: PHYSOR 2022 | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2204174
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The current study describes a simulation-based analysis of the atmospheric dispersion of radionuclide fission product particles in the near-field and far-field of a generic, conceptual microreactor, which is a small nuclear reactor with a power output typically ranging from 1 to 20 MW(thermal) and generally lower than 50 MW(electric). The near-field is a distance of up to 100 m from the microreactor while the far-field is a distance of 300 m or beyond from the microreactor. The generic microreactor operates at a pressure close to the ambient pressure. Therefore, in the event of a postulated accident that causes the leakage of radionuclide particles from the microreactor containment into the environment, the radionuclide particles are unlikely to travel too far from the reactor, as opposed to conventional nuclear reactors. The current paper provides estimates of average and 95th-percentile values of the normalized effluent concentration of the atmospheric radionuclide particle dispersion with respect to the source strength in the near-field and far-field of the conceptual microreactor. The computer code Atmospheric Relative CONcentrations in Building Wakes (ARCON96) was used to perform all simulations for the current study. It was observed that the 95th-percentile values of the normalized effluent concentration decrease by an order of magnitude as the receptor distance increases, i.e., from the near-field to the far-field. The dispersed aerosol concentration also decreases with time. A parametric study was performed to understand which input parameters affect the normalized effluent concentration values the most, and a definitive screening design was employed for this purpose. The atmospheric stability class and the distance between the reactor and the receptor were the parameters found to affect the aerosol dispersion characteristics by the greatest extent. The study recommends that the computer code RADTRAD (Radionuclide Transport and Removal And Dose Estimation) be used to estimate the actual dosage over distance using the outputs from ARCON96 as inputs, along with reactor-specific core inventories.
