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Division Spotlight
Education, Training & Workforce Development
The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
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.
J. C. Jaboulay, S. Bourganel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 177 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 73-82
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT12-A13328
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Decay heat measurements, called the MERCI experiment, were conducted at Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA)/Saclay to characterize accurately residual power at short cooling time and verify its prediction by decay code and nuclear data. The MOSAÏC calorimeter, developed and patented by CEA/Grenoble (DTN/SE2T), enables measurement of the decay heat released by a pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel rod sample between 200 and 4 W within a precision of 1%. The MERCI experiment included three phases. At first, a UO2 fuel rod sample was irradiated in the CEA/Saclay experimental reactor OSIRIS. The burnup achieved at the end of irradiation was [approximately]3.5 GWd/tonne. The second phase was the transfer of the fuel rod sample from its irradiation location to a hot cell, to be inserted inside the MOSAÏC calorimeter. It took 26 min to carry out the transfer. Finally, decay heat released by the PWR sample was measured from 27 min to 42 days after shutdown. Postirradiation examinations were performed to measure concentrations of some heavy nuclei (U, Pu) and fission products (Cs, Nd). The decay heat was predicted using a calculation scheme based on the PEPIN2 depletion code, the TRIPOLI-4 Monte Carlo code, and the JEFF3.1.1 nuclear data file. The MERCI experiment analysis shows that the discrepancy between the calculated and the experimental decay heat values is included between -10% at 27 min and +6% at 12 h, 30 min after shutdown. From 4 up to 42 days of cooling time, the difference between calculation and measurement is about ±1%, i.e., experimental uncertainty. The MERCI experiment represents a significant contribution for code validation; the time range above 105 s has not been validated previously.