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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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Remembering Charles E. Till
Charles E. Till
Charles E. Till, an ANS member since 1963 and Fellow since 1987, passed away on March 22 at the age of 89. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Saskatchewan and a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Imperial College, University of London. Till initially worked for the Civilian Atomic Power Department of the Canadian General Electric Company, where he was the physicist in charge of the startup of the first prototype CANDU reactor in Canada.
Till joined Argonne National Laboratory in 1963 in the Applied Physics Division, where he worked as an experimentalist in the Fast Critical Experiments program. He then moved to additional positions of increasing responsibility, becoming division director in 1973. Under his leadership, the Applied Physics Division established itself as one of the elite reactor physics organizations in the world. Both the experimental (critical experiments and nuclear data measurements) and nuclear analysis methods work were internationally recognized. Till led Argonne’s participation in the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE), and he was the lead U.S. delegate to INFCE Working Group 5, Fast Breeders.
N. Zweibaum, Z. Guo, J. C. Kendrick, P. F. Peterson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 196 | Number 3 | December 2016 | Pages 641-660
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT16-15
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The capability to validate integral transient response models is a key issue for licensing new reactor designs. The Compact Integral Effects Test (CIET 1.0) facility reproduces the thermal-hydraulic response of fluoride salt–cooled high-temperature reactors (FHRs) under forced- and natural-circulation operation. CIET 1.0 provides validating data to confirm the predicted performance of the direct reactor auxiliary cooling system, used for natural-circulation–driven decay heat removal in FHRs, under a set of reference licensing basis events. CIET 1.0 uses a simulant fluid, DOWTHERM A oil, which, at relatively low temperatures (50°C to 120°C), matches the Prandtl, Reynolds, and Grashof numbers of the major liquid salts simultaneously, at 50% geometric scale and heater power under 2% of prototypical conditions. CIET 1.0 has been designed, fabricated, filled with DOWTHERM A oil, and operated. Isothermal pressure drop tests were completed, with extensive pressure data collection to determine friction losses in the system. The project then entered a phase of heated tests, from parasitic heat loss tests to more complex feedback control tests and natural-circulation experiments, with the ultimate goal of validating best-estimate FHR models using RELAP5-3D and the novel one-dimensional FHR Advanced Natural Circulation Analysis (FANCY) code. This paper introduces the scaling strategy, design, and fabrication aspects, and start-up testing results from CIET 1.0. The CIET 1.0 model in RELAP5-3D and FANCY is detailed, and verification and validation efforts are presented. For various heat input levels and temperature boundary conditions, mass flow rates are compared between RELAP5-3D and FANCY results, analytical solutions when available, and experimental data, for both single and coupled natural-circulation loops. The study shows that both RELAP5-3D and FANCY provide excellent predictions of steady-state natural circulation in CIET 1.0, with mass flow rates within 13% of experimental data, suggesting that both codes are good candidates for design and licensing of FHR technology.