Nuclear Technology -- ANS / Publications / Journals / Nuclear Technology

About ANS
- ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
About Nuclear
- Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Communities
- Division Spotlight
  Operations & Power
  Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
Events
- 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
- 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!
Publications
- Latest Magazine Issues
  Apr 2025
  Jan 2025
  Latest Journal Issues
  Nuclear Science and Engineering
  June 2025
  Nuclear Technology
  June 2025
  Fusion Science and Technology
  May 2025
- 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.
Search

This study has researched an estimation method for the amounts of residual sodium film and sodium lumps on dummy fuel pins in the Japanese prototype fast breeder reactor Monju by fundamental experiments and demonstration experiments. The residual sodium amounts on the pin surface were measured using three types of test specimens: (a) single pin, (b) 7-pin assembly, and (c) 169-pin assembly. The single pin and 7-pin assembly experiments revealed that the withdrawal speed of the pins and improvement of the sodium wetting drastically increased the residual sodium amounts. Furthermore, the 169-pin assembly experiments measured the practical amounts of the residual sodium in the Monju dummy fuel assembly and demonstrated sodium draining behavior through small gaps between the pins. The estimation method includes four models such as a viscosity flow model, Landau-Levich-Derjaguin (LLD) model, an empirical equation related to the Bretherton model, and a capillary force model in a tube. These calculation results were comparable to the residual sodium amounts obtained by the experiments. In the tests of improving sodium wetting, the amounts of residual sodium on the test specimen were close to 1.4 times larger than those of the thin sodium film estimated by the LLD model. The increased amount of residual sodium by improving the sodium wetting was explained by the ratio of the adhesion energy ().