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Division Spotlight
Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
Meeting Spotlight
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
G7 pledges support for nuclear at Italy meeting
The Group of Seven (G7) recommitted its support for nuclear energy in the countries that opt to use it at a Ministerial Meeting on Climate in Italy last month.
In a statement following the April meeting, the group committed to support multilateral efforts to strengthen the resilience of nuclear supply chains, referencing the goal set by 25 countries during last year’s COP28 climate conference in Dubai to triple global nuclear generating capacity by 2050.
Xiong Gao, Jamie B. Coble, A. C. Hines, Belle R. Upadhyaya, J. Wesley Hines
Nuclear Technology | Volume 207 | Number 11 | November 2021 | Pages 1725-1745
Regular Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1831873
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear power plants (NPPs) require accurate measurement of mass flow rates. Advanced flowmeters have been widely applied in several current industries; however, the operating environment in NPPs is especially harsh because of high temperature, high radiation, and extremely corrosive conditions. Several of the advanced reactor designs, such as liquid sodium pool reactors and integral small modular reactors, do not have conventional primary piping systems. These designs require an alternative method to accurately measure primary flow. Cross-correlation function (CCF) flow estimation can estimate the flow velocity indirectly without any specific instruments for flow measurement. The target flow rate is derived by the delay time between two sensors located near each other along the flow direction. Temperature sensors are a common choice for this function because they are reliable, economical, and widely used in various industries. The delay time is inferred by applying the CCF to the signals collected from two or more sensors. CCF flow estimation can be performed in any structure of the flow region, not limited to pipes. One challenge for the CCF flow estimation is that the accuracy of the flow measurement is mainly determined by the inherent local process variation, which is small compared to the uncorrelated noise. To differentiate the process variations from the uncorrelated noise, this paper demonstrates periodic fluid injection of a different temperature before the sensors to amplify common process variation. The feasibility and accuracy of this method have been investigated through a physical flow loop experiment designed to verify the CCF flow estimation using fluid injection. Several parameters must be selected when designing the fluid injection CCF measurement system, such as the distance between the fluid injection site and the sensors, the injection period, and the injection flow rate. A series of tests was conducted to investigate whether these parameters were related to the accuracy of the CCF flow estimation and to identify appropriate values for these parameters for different flow regimes. The results show that the fluid injection method improves the flow measurement performance, and the appropriate design of flow injection and measurement geometry produces better flow characterization performance over a range of flow rates.