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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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Latest News
Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Matthew P. Simones, Sudarshan K. Loyalka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 189 | Number 1 | January 2015 | Pages 45-62
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-14
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs), an improved understanding of the production of carbonaceous dust (e.g., by abrasion, corrosion, radiation damage, and gas-to-particle conversion) and the subsequent transport of the dust and associated sorbed fission products is needed. Diffusion charging and/or self-charging of the suspended dust particles (aerosol) is likely to occur, which affects how the aerosol evolves in time and ultimately deposits on surfaces. At present, nuclear reactor safety codes, such as MELCOR, do not account for these effects and there is currently no consensus on their importance, partly due to a lack of experimental data as well as tools for computations. Further experimentation and modeling of these effects are therefore needed to resolve these issues. We report on an experimental investigation of the coagulation of charged aerosols pertinent to HTGRs by measuring the evolution of size and charge distributions over time and comparing the experimental results with computations using the direct simulation Monte Carlo method. Measurements have been completed for both silver and carbon ultrafine aerosols using a tandem differential mobility analyzer and an open-flow coagulation chamber with a residence time of nearly 400 s. Results for both aerosols indicate that coagulation occurs faster than predicted by the simulations, at times differing by an order of magnitude. While the paper is focused on specific aerosols, it is of wider significance in that it provides the first such comparisons between data and simulations on charged aerosol coagulation.