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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.
Xinyu Zhao, Eugene Shwageraus (Univ of Cambridge)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 198-205
GeN-FOAM is a multi-physics solver based on the OpenFOAM library developed at PSI/EPFL, Switzerland for transient analyses of fast reactors. The current version of GeN-FOAM can simulate a wide range of transients with flexible spatial resolution. One of the main limitations of the current version, however, is relatively simple fuel temperature calculation model. Also, the effects of fuel structural and dimensional changes as a function of temperature, composition and burnup are currently not considered. This work first presents the integration of an advanced fuel performance modelling tool TRANSURANUS developed at Joint Research Centre (JRC)-Karlsruhe into the GeN-Foam solver. The new coupled tool is referred to as the GeN-transFoam. The original GeN-Foam doesn't have burnup calculation capability which makes it very inconvenient to simulate a reactor at the end of cycle, especially when an accurate fuel behaviour prediction is expected. The paper reports a simple way to implement the burnup calculation, given the configuration of the GeN-Foam solver. The GeNtransFoam solver with account for burnup effects is used to analysis the European Sodium Fast Reactor (ESFR) at the end of cycle (EOC) in steady state condition. The neutronics calculation results are compared with results provided by Monte Carlo calculation. In the end, the burnup calculation in the code is discussed.
