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August 24–27, 2026
Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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NN Asks: Is the U.S. ready for nuclear construction to accelerate?
Craig Stover
Yes, but . . .
The United States is better positioned today for nuclear construction than it has been in decades. Some of that comes from the experience gained at Vogtle and V.C. Summer. I was part of the team that helped start the V.C. Summer project in 2008, and at that time we were trying to build a nuclear construction workforce from scratch. We learned a lot through that effort, and many of those lessons learned have since been studied, documented, and shared.
The nuclear industry is also benefiting from the wave of investment that started growing around 2020. Over the last five or six years, there has been a serious effort across the country to get ready for new nuclear builds. The U.S. government and the private sector are investing billions of dollars in new nuclear. Much of that work is happening before widespread commercial deployment contracts are signed. This is real, and we need to prepare.
Graydon L. Yoder, Jr., David G. Morris, Charles B. Mullins, Larry J. Ott
Nuclear Technology | Volume 60 | Number 2 | February 1983 | Pages 304-313
Technical Paper | Radiation Effects and Their Relationship to Geological Repository / Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT83-A33086
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A series of steady-state film boiling experiments have been conducted to show the effect of spacer grids on rod bundle heat transfer. Experiments were performed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the Thermal-Hydraulic Test Facility, a pressurized water loop containing a 64-rod bundle, of which 60 rods are electrically heated. The bundle is equipped with detailed thermometry around two grids, which allows grid heat transfer effects to be studied. Rod surface temperature data show a 75 to 150 K temperature difference between measurements upstream and downstream of the grids, while heat transfer coefficients increase across the grids by 20%. Twenty to thirty hydraulic diameters are required for these effects to dissipate.