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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
IAEA again raises global nuclear power projections
Noting recent momentum behind nuclear power, the International Atomic Energy Agency has revised up its projections for the expansion of nuclear power, estimating that global nuclear operational capacity will more than double by 2050—reaching 2.6 times the 2024 level—with small modular reactors expected to play a pivotal role in this high-case scenario.
IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi announced the new projections, contained in the annual report Energy, Electricity, and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2050 at the 69th IAEA General Conference in Vienna.
In the report’s high-case scenario, nuclear electrical generating capacity is projected to increase to from 377 GW at the end of 2024 to 992 GW by 2050. In a low-case scenario, capacity rises 50 percent, compared with 2024, to 561 GW. SMRs are projected to account for 24 percent of the new capacity added in the high case and for 5 percent in the low case.
Rajgopal Vijaykumar, Mohsen Khatib-Rahbar
Nuclear Technology | Volume 128 | Number 3 | December 1999 | Pages 313-326
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT99-A3034
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The applicability of the empirical approach in the CONTAIN computer code for the simulation of induced flow and heat transfer in asymmetrically heated, vertical parallel-plate channels is investigated. The physical situation is related to containment cooling in the Westinghouse AP600 reactor. The countercurrent flow of air in the channel is induced by the thermal buoyancy force. In CONTAIN, the heat and mass transfer analogy (with Sherwood number calculated based on an empirical Nusselt number correlation for fully developed flows), including the film theory correction for high mass transfer, is used to calculate film evaporation. The buoyancy-induced flow is calculated through coupled solutions to lumped-parameter mass, energy, and momentum equations. The CONTAIN predictions are first compared with the Purdue results of a more detailed two-dimensional model under identical conditions in a simple parallel-plate channel. Then the CONTAIN predictions are compared with the results of the Purdue two-dimensional model and with data for two selected (forced and free convection) tests performed in the Westinghouse Large Scale Test (LST) Facility. Analyses show that the CONTAIN-calculated Sherwood numbers, the total heat fluxes, the steam mass fraction, and the bulk velocity in the channel are comparable to the two-dimensional Purdue investigations for the parallel-plate simulations and for the conditions of the Westinghouse LST Facility.
