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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.
L. Romero, L. Moreno, I. Neretnieks
Nuclear Technology | Volume 112 | Number 1 | October 1995 | Pages 89-98
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A15854
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Radionuclides leaking from a damaged canister spread into the backfill material surrounding the canister and then migrate through different pathways into water-bearing fractures in the rock surrounding the nuclear waste repository. If the backfill and other materials surrounding the canister have a low permeability, water flow is then excluded from these materials, and the solute transport is by diffusion only. Some nuclides are delayed by sorption on the materials through which they move, and those nuclides with short half-lives may decay to insignificant concentrations before they reach the flowing water in the fractures in the rock. This complex and variable transport geometry is modeled using a compartment model. The NUCTRAN compartment model is a useful tool to calculate the nonstationary transport of single nuclides or radionuclide chains. The model, which is a very coarsely discretized integrated finite difference model, is devised to be very fast and compact by embedding analytical solutions at sensitive points such as entrances and exits from small holes and fractures. The nuclide inventory in the source may be calculated using a solubility limit approach or a congruent dissolution approach. The model is flexible and can easily be adapted to various geometries. NUCTRAN agrees well with models using a very detailed discretization. Accuracy is gained if compartments with very large capacities are subdivided into a few compartments.