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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.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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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Latest News
Proving DRACO will deliver
The United States is now closer than it has been in over five decades to launching the first nuclear thermal rocket into space, thanks to DRACO—the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Orbit.
Bradley Heath, Colby Jensen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 9 | September 2020 | Pages 1436-1448
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1725370
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) Facility is a graphite reactor capable of delivering tailored power histories to unique experiment designs. Frequently, these experiments are designed to simulate a specific reactor transient to perform detailed studies of reactor fuel behavior. The reactor core is uniquely designed to allow a limited energy release and resulting peak fuel cladding temperature such that thermal feedback mechanisms shut the reactor power transient down in a passive manner, thus maximizing the lifetime of the reactor fuel cladding. The reactor is air cooled; however, the cooling system does not serve a safety function. The air cooling is typically used for four main functions: (1) accelerate cooling of the reactor core to ambient temperature post transient operations, (2) remove activated gases from the reactor cavity, (3) perform heat balance for power calibration, and (4) maintain criticality on extended steady-state runs or shaped transients. With the restart of the reactor, these systems are now fully operational and have been exercised during the past year for the first time in more than 20 years. This paper summarizes the thermal properties of the core and the thermal-hydraulic design of the TREAT Facility and presents selected results of temperature profiles resulting from operation. Conservatively estimated maximum transient energy and steady-state power is provided.