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Reactor Physics
The division's objectives are to promote the advancement of knowledge and understanding of the fundamental physical phenomena characterizing nuclear reactors and other nuclear systems. The division encourages research and disseminates information through meetings and publications. Areas of technical interest include nuclear data, particle interactions and transport, reactor and nuclear systems analysis, methods, design, validation and operating experience and standards. The Wigner Award heads the awards program.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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Norway’s Halden reactor takes first step toward decommissioning
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
Yoshiyuki Kataoka, Michio Murase, Tadashi Fujii, Kenji Tominaga
Nuclear Technology | Volume 111 | Number 2 | August 1995 | Pages 241-250
Technical Paper | Nuclear Criticality Safety Special / Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A35133
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An external water wall type containment cooling system is one of the passive containment cooling systems that use no active components and are intended for system simplification in the next generation power reactors. The core decay heat during a postulated loss-of-coolant accident is accumulated in the suppression pool (SP) and transferred to the outer pool, which is a cooling pool located outside and adjacent to the SP, by only natural phenomena such as natural convection, heat conduction, and evaporation. The temperature profiles and the convection heat transfer coefficients in the pools were measured using a 5-m height apparatus. The formation of a thermal stratification boundary at the vent outlets, which restricts the effective heat transfer area between pools, was clarified, and a correlation for natural convection heat transfer coefficients was obtained. Condensation heat transfer coefficients on the containment vessel wall and evaporation heat transfer coefficients on the SP surface under a noncondensable gas presence, which strongly affected the heat removal from the wet well, were evaluated based on the test results, and the correlations were obtained. The heat removal evaluation models, which analyze the trends of the temperatures and pressure, were developed and verified with system tests. As for the improvement of heat removal capability, two methods were proposed. One is a baffle plate to mitigate thermal stratification in the SP and enlarge the effective heat transfer area between pools. The second method is a divided wet well to avoid noncondensable gas effects. The thermal-hydraulic behavior in the SP with a baffle plate was clarified by three-dimensional analysis, and the effectiveness of these methods was experimentally confirmed.