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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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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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.
Soon K. Lee, Maolong Liu, Edward D. Blandford, Youho Lee (Univ of New Mexico), Nicholas R. Brown (Penn State), Hang Ban (Univ of Pittsburgh), Colby B. Jensen (INL), Kurt A. Terrani (ORNL)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 414-427
This study presents an investigation of critical heat flux (CHF) variation upon the use of candidate Accident Tolerant Fuel (ATF) cladding (FeCrAl alloy) compared to Inconel600, Zircaloy-4 and the 2006 CHF look-up table by conducting the flow boiling experiments under steady-state condition at an atmospheric pressure and at fixed inlet temperatures and a mass flux. To directly compare the CHF change during transient condition relevant to Reactivity Initiated Accident (RIA), experiments were done at the same thermodynamic quality and flow condition following the steady-state condition CHF results. An increased thermal safety margin of FeCrAl alloy compared to other tested alloys were identified as well as a disagreement between the Zircaloy-4 experimental CHF results and the 2006 CHF look-up table, which implies limitation of the current thermal-hydraulic codes for interpreting fuel design safety margin. To gain a better understanding on the implications of wettability on CHF, contact angle measurements were carried out on both fresh and oxide surfaces and the detailed morphology analysis was done by scanning electron microscope, which suggests a negligible impact of the wettability on the flow boiling CHF.