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Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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.
Cameron R. Bass, Houston G. Wood III
Nuclear Technology | Volume 110 | Number 2 | May 1995 | Pages 273-284
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35125
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The use of microwave experiments in normal fluids is proposed for the approximation of the volumetric heating distribution in cryogenic flow of radiation-heated deuterium in the advanced neutron source (ANS) cold neutron source (CNS) planned for construction at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The potential of such experiments is investigated by solving Maxwell’s equations for microwave propagation and absorption in several noncryogenic model fluids. Included are an analytical Mie series solution for an idealized ANS CNS geometry and a solution in a more complex and realistic geometry by the computational finite difference time domain (FDTD) technique. Though data and anecdotal evidence suggest difficulty with specifying a given volumetric heating distribution in a boiling liquid in a microwave cavity, the computational results suggest that CNS-like heating distributions can be obtained by using microwave irradiation. Two aspects of microwave heating are examined. The first is scale dependence of heating across various fluid particle sizes in a potentially complex multiphase flow, and the second is detailed heating distribution across a realistic three-dimensional ANS CNS geometry. By using a Mie series solution in spherical geometries to indicate dependence of microwave heating on fluid particle size for flow scales relevant to ANS CNS flows, several fluids, including n-propanol and n-butanol, are found to show <20% variation in heating on scales from 0.01 down to 10−7 m. By using FDTD computations, the expected ANS heating distribution in liquid deuterium is compared with heating distribution under microwave irradiation for several different model fluids. Good qualitative agreement is found between expected ANS heating distribution and microwave heating in the n-propanol and n-butanol fluids including the heating asymmetry expected in ANS CNS flows. By using this simulated heating distribution, volume-heated flow can be investigated. Expected results from such an investigation include flow regime determination, effects of nucleation phenomena, and other physical characteristics such as heating distribution, container shape, and fluid properties.
