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Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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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Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
O. Petit, E. Dumonteil
Nuclear Technology | Volume 192 | Number 3 | December 2015 | Pages 259-263
Technical Paper | Radiation Transport and Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-128
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Monte Carlo simulations of nuclear instrumentation configurations generally need to be run in a full analog transport mode. Up to Version 9 of the Monte Carlo code TRIPOLI-4®, the transport between two consecutive neutron collisions is analog if no variance reduction technique is requested by the user, but the collision itself is sampled in a nonanalog way. This paper presents the first implementation of a full analog neutron transport mode in TRIPOLI-4. This option concerns only fixed-source simulations.
Details on the modifications implemented in the code are provided: The analog sampling of neutron interactions and the particular cases of fission and scattering reactions with multiple outgoing neutrons are addressed.
Preliminary verification tests are provided, and results from nonanalog and analog neutron transport in a simple configuration of a pressurized water reactor fuel assembly are compared. An example of application to the simulation of the NUCIFER detector is also provided. This experiment, located in Saclay, France, next to the OSIRIS experimental reactor, is dedicated to reactor antineutrino detection, addressing both nonproliferation considerations and fundamental physics concerns. Antineutrinos emitted by fission reactions in OSIRIS are detected through the inverse beta decay reaction, producing a positron and a neutron. An analog TRIPOLI-4 simulation allowed us to calculate the distribution of neutron capture times on gadolinium nuclei.