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Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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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.
Sadia Khalid, Idrees Ahmad, Awais Zahur
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 9 | September 2019 | Pages 1175-1184
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1580530
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The long-term, safe, and reliable operation of a reactor coolant pump is vital for the safety of a nuclear reactor. In the case of a station blackout or power failure to the pump, the inertia of rotating parts of the pump should provide sufficient pumping capacity or flow rate to remove decay heat to ensure the safety of the reactor. An accurate flow coastdown analysis is required for the design and manufacture of reactor coolant pumps. In this paper a mathematical model is formulated to study flow coastdown of CHASNUPP-2, which is a pressurized water reactor. Frictional losses in the pump are also incorporated in the model to get accurate results. Two important parameters of the model are inertia of the pump impeller and inertia of the coolant, which are related to each other in the form of effective energy ratio. The effective energy ratio is made variable in order to accurately model the flow coastdown transient. The model is solved numerically to get flow coastdown curves and the comparison of the theoretical and experimental results shows a good agreement between them.