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Division Spotlight
Operations & Power
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.
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.
Antonio F. Dias, Laurance D. Eisenhart, Diane M. Bell, Terry J. Garrett, Glenn J. Neises, Lance J. Agee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 100 | Number 2 | November 1992 | Pages 193-202
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT92-A34742
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The steamline break accident is one of several specified severe transients addressed in the final safety analysis report for any pressurized water reactor plant as part of the licensing procedure. A rupture in a main steamline in the secondary system causes a sudden cooling of the water in the corresponding primary loop. The cold water flowing into part of the core represents a positive reactivity insertion that must be contained by control rods, which are scrammed into the core almost immediately. Later in the scenario, soluble boron reaches the core from the emergency core cooling system. When simulating a steamline break accident during the licensing procedure, many conservative assumptions are added to the transient description. Historically, a steamline break analysis is performed with a system analysis code like RETRAN, using a rather simplified (point kinetics) description of the core. The three-dimensionality of the event within the core is accounted for by constant “blending factors,” which are used to calculate the evolving point kinetics parameters based on a simplistic cold and hot partition of the core. The ARROTTA-01 and VIPRE-02 computer codes are coupled to allow a detailed three-dimensional simulation of the reactor core during a steamline break event. The results show that a much milder transient is observed than when a point kinetics treatment was used. Test cases study the influence of different core modeling considerations on the overall simulation. The advent of very fast and extremely affordable computing machines (e.g., workstations) should cause the review of some of the simplified approaches initially adopted for many core simulations. More complex and detailed codes can now be routinely employed.