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Division Spotlight
Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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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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.
Yong Soo Kim, Chang Hwan Park, Byoung Uhn Bae, Goon Cherl Park, Kune Yull Suh, Un Chul Lee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 149 | Number 2 | February 2005 | Pages 200-216
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3590
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This study concerns the development of an integrated calculation methodology with which to continually and consistently analyze the progression of an accident from the design-basis accident phase via core uncovery to the severe accident phase. The depletion rate of reactor coolant inventory was experimentally investigated after the safety injection failure during a large-break loss-of-coolant accident utilizing the Seoul National University Integral Test Facility (SNUF), which is scaled down to 1/6.4 in length and 1/178 in area from the APR1400 [Advanced Power Reactor 1400 MW(electric)]. The experimental results showed that the core coolant inventory decreased five times faster before than after the extinction of sweepout in the reactor downcomer, which is induced by the incoming steam from the intact cold legs. The sweepout occurred on top of the spillover from the downcomer region and expedited depletion of the core coolant inventory. The test result was simulated with the MAAP4 severe accident analysis code. The calculation results of the original MAAP4 deviated from the test data in terms of coolant inventory distribution in the test vessel. After the calculation algorithm of coolant level distribution was improved by including the subroutine of pseudo pressure buildup, which accounts for the differential pressure between the core and downcomer in MAAP4, the core melt progression was delayed by hundreds of seconds, and the code prediction was in reasonable agreement with the overall behavior of the SNUF experiment.