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Division Spotlight
Nuclear Criticality Safety
NCSD provides communication among nuclear criticality safety professionals through the development of standards, the evolution of training methods and materials, the presentation of technical data and procedures, and the creation of specialty publications. In these ways, the division furthers the exchange of technical information on nuclear criticality safety with the ultimate goal of promoting the safe handling of fissionable materials outside reactors.
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.
Yoshitaka Chikazawa, Atsushi Katoh, Hiroyuki Hayafune, Yoshio Shimakawa, Yoshio Kamishima
Nuclear Technology | Volume 192 | Number 2 | November 2015 | Pages 111-124
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-151
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Severe external hazards on the Japan Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor (JSFR) have been analyzed and evaluated. For seismic design, safety components are confirmed to maintain their functions even against recent strong earthquakes. Integrity of the major components has been confirmed covering recent earthquake conditions. In the case of a tsunami, the seawater pumps for the component cooling water system (CCWS) could be damaged by the tsunami, since they are located at sea level. In the JSFR design with full natural convection decay heat removal systems (DHRSs) and an air-cooling emergency gas turbine, safety-grade components are independent of CCWS, and loss of CCWS does not affect reactor cooling. As a conservative case, hypothetical station blackout (SBO) has been evaluated. In the case of SBO, decay heat is removed by natural convection DHRS, but control of the air cooler (AC) damper is lost after the battery power is out. The analysis has revealed that freezing at one of three ACs could happen due to loss of automatic control of AC dampers. However, the time margin to protected loss of heat sink is evaluated to be >10 days. Manual control of the AC damper is also investigated. Transient analyses show that the AC dampers can be controlled manually adopting a simple operation procedure with sufficient operation time. Decay heat cooling in the case of collapse in all air stacks of AC has been evaluated. The result shows that decay heat could be removed maintaining air paths in two of three ACs by accident management. In conclusion, JSFR in the 2010 design version has enough external hazard toughness mainly thanks to passive safety features and a seismic isolation system.