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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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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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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Glass strategy: Hanford’s enhanced waste glass program
The mission of the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection (ORP) is to complete the safe cleanup of waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons development. One of the most technologically challenging responsibilities is the safe disposition of approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive waste historically stored in 177 tanks at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
ORP has a clear incentive to reduce the overall mission duration and cost. One pathway is to develop and deploy innovative technical solutions that can advance baseline flow sheets toward higher efficiency operations while reducing identified risks without compromising safety. Vitrification is the baseline process that will convert both high-level and low-level radioactive waste at Hanford into a stable glass waste form for long-term storage and disposal.
Although vitrification is a mature technology, there are key areas where technology can further reduce operational risks, advance baseline processes to maximize waste throughput, and provide the underpinning to enhance operational flexibility; all steps in reducing mission duration and cost.
B. H. Mills, J. D. Rader, D. L. Sadowski, M. Yoda, S. I. Abdel-Khalik
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 3 | September 2013 | Pages 670-674
Test Blanket, Fuel Cycle, and Breeding | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 2) Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-527
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
As part of the ARIES study, the Georgia Tech group has experimentally studied the thermal performance of a helium-cooled `finger-type' tungsten divertor design that uses jet impingement and a fin array to cool the plasma-facing surface. These studies were performed using air at Reynolds numbers Re, spanning those for prototypical operating conditions. A brass test section heated with an oxy-acetylene torch at incident heat fluxes up to 2 MW/m2 was used. Recently, data obtained with room-temperature helium suggests that dynamic similarity between the air and helium experiments cannot be achieved by only matching Re because of the difference in the relative contributions of convection and conduction through the annular side walls of the divertor. Numerical simulations suggest that achieving dynamic similarity requires matching the ratio of the thermal conductivity of the divertor module material to that of the coolant under operating conditions, as well as Re.Studies were performed to verify that experiments at the prototypical Re and thermal conductivity ratio using helium at room temperature give Nusselt numbers Nu that are dynamically similar to those at prototypical operating conditions. Given that the thermal conductivity of helium decreases as temperature decreases, matching of the thermal conductivity ratio required a carbon steel test section with a thermal conductivity much lower than that of the brass alloy previously used. The resulting ratio of the test section to coolant thermal conductivities is similar to that of the tungsten alloy and helium at prototypical conditions. The data were used to verify generalized correlations for Nu, as a function of Re and the thermal conductivity ratio. The correlations can be used to determine the maximum heat flux that can be accommodated by the divertor at prototypical conditions.