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Division Spotlight
Materials Science & Technology
The objectives of MSTD are: promote the advancement of materials science in Nuclear Science Technology; support the multidisciplines which constitute it; encourage research by providing a forum for the presentation, exchange, and documentation of relevant information; promote the interaction and communication among its members; and recognize and reward its members for significant contributions to the field of materials science in nuclear technology.
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.
V. Subramanian, R. Baskaran, J. Misra, R. Indira
Nuclear Technology | Volume 176 | Number 1 | October 2011 | Pages 83-92
Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A12544
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In core disruptive accident conditions of sodium-cooled fast reactors, the reactor containment building (RCB) is filled with a large amount of sodium aerosols, along with fuel and fission product aerosols. The environmental source term depends on the quantity of aerosols released from RCB, which in turn depends on the quantity of aerosols that remains suspended in the RCB volume. The sodium aerosols are generated by the combustion process, resulting in micrometer-sized aerosols, while fuel and fission product aerosols are generated by vaporization condensation, resulting in nanometer-sized aerosols. To ascertain the behavior of mixed aerosols generated by the different processes, experiments are conducted by generating sodium aerosols and nonradioactive fission product aerosols and then studying their behavior in a closed vessel. The study includes (a) the initial size distribution of CeO2 and SrO2 aerosols, (b) the behavior of suspended mass concentration as a function of time, and (c) the behavior of suspended number concentration as a function of time. The initial size of the sodium combustion aerosols is [approximately]1.0 m, whereas the initial size of the fuel and fission product aerosols is nanometer sized ([approximately]30 nm). In the context of the behavior of the two different-sized aerosols, sodium aerosol behavior dominates the overall suspended mass concentration of the system. The rate of change of number concentration exhibits two regions. The timescale involved for the Brownian coagulation region is found to be [approximately]80 min for nonradioactive fission product aerosols, whereas it lasts only 20 to 30 min when the aerosol system is mixed with sodium aerosols.
