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Division Spotlight
Mathematics & Computation
Division members promote the advancement of mathematical and computational methods for solving problems arising in all disciplines encompassed by the Society. They place particular emphasis on numerical techniques for efficient computer applications to aid in the dissemination, integration, and proper use of computer codes, including preparation of computational benchmark and development of standards for computing practices, and to encourage the development on new computer codes and broaden their use.
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.
Sheng Zhang, Xiaodong Sun
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 11 | November 2020 | Pages 1721-1739
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1749481
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Molten salts have been proposed as heat transfer media due to their superior thermal performance at elevated temperatures. A number of heat transfer correlations have been proposed in the literature for molten salts without explicitly considering the radiative heat transfer effect in the salts, which may not be negligible. This study therefore attempts to (1) quantitatively analyze the convective and radiative heat transfer of molten salts using an overall heat transfer model that includes a radiative heat transfer model developed in this research and an existing conventional convective heat transfer model/correlation, such as the Sieder-Tate or Hausen correlation, and (2) provide rationale on under what conditions it is necessary to consider the radiative heat transfer effect in salts. A parametric study was performed using the radiative heat transfer model developed to investigate the effects of various input variables, including the tube size (inner diameter 5 to 50 mm), salt temperature (500°C to 1000°C), salt and wall temperature difference (5°C to 100°C), and salt absorption coefficient (1 to 100 m-1). Our study indicates that (1) the proposed overall heat transfer model reasonably predicts the salt convective and radiative heat transfer, (2) the radiative heat transfer is more important for laminar flows than transitional and turbulent flows, (3) the radiative heat transfer is more important in tubes of larger inner diameter, (4) the salt temperature affects the radiative heat transfer significantly while the temperature difference between the salt and wall has a slightly smaller effect for the range investigated (ΔT = 5°C to 100°C), and (5) the salt absorption coefficient significantly affects the salt radiative heat transfer.