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Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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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Nicholas Tsoulfanidis—ANS member since 1969
We welcome ANS members who have careered in the community to submit their own Nuclear Legacy stories, so that the personal history of nuclear power can be captured. For information on submitting your stories, contact nucnews@ans.org.
As an undergraduate I studied physics at the University of Athens. I entered the university in 1955 after successfully passing a national exam (came up fourth in a field of about 700 candidates). Upon graduation and finishing my mandatory two-year military service, the plan was to teach physics either in a public high school or as a tutor for a private for-profit institution, preparing high school students for the national exam.
Stefan Renger, Sören Alt, Ulrike Gocht, Wolfgang Kästner, André Seeliger, Holger Kryk, Ulrich Harm
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 1 | January-February 2019 | Pages 248-261
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1499324
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In a joint research project of the Zittau/Goerlitz University of Applied Sciences, the Technische Universität Dresden, and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, the main emphasis is the time-related assignment of simultaneous and interacting mechanisms at zinc sources and zinc sinks at boundary conditions of a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) in German pressurized water reactors (PWRs). The required experiments are carried out at semitechnical and laboratory scales.
Zinc is used as a protective coating, e.g., for gratings in the containment, showing high corrosion resistance due to a gradual formation of passivating layers. In contrast, its long-term behavior during LOCA changes significantly under the influence of the coolant chemistry of German PWRs. As a consequence, installations in the containment act as zinc sources. Released zinc ions change the chemical properties of the coolant and could, e.g., lead to layer-forming depositions of zinc borates in the core, which increases the possibility of a hindered heat dissipation. For experimental and methodical investigations of these phenomena, the test rig Zittau flow tray, a scaled sump model of a German PWR, was equipped with a full-length 3 × 3 fuel assembly dummy acting as core model, a preheater, and a cooler component. Nine 4.4-m-long fuel rod dummies simulate the decay heat by internal heating cartridges. This rig design enables experimental investigation of physicochemical mechanisms considering coolant containing boric acid and zinc and their influence on the thermohydraulic processes in the reactor core at post-LOCA boundary conditions. Additional zinc corrosion and zinc borate precipitation studies to elucidate chemical zinc corrosion mechanisms and dependencies of those processes on typical LOCA parameters were carried out using lab-scale corrosion/precipitation test facilities.
The time-dependent zinc release at hot-dip galvanized gratings (HGGs) was investigated regarding their position (e.g., inside or near the leaking jet, freely suspended, or submerged in the coolant) and their surface area as well as the temperature and flow rate of the coolant. The experimental database allows the approximation of corrosion rates in dependence of HGG position and the accident-specific coolant leakage rate as well as first mathematical approaches for the modeling of zinc sources.