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Division Spotlight
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.
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
PPPL study points to better fusion plasma control
The combination of two previously known methods for managing plasma conditions can result in enhanced control of plasma in a fusion reactor, according to a simulation performed by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
Jieun Lee, Paolo Balestra, Yassin A. Hassan, Robert Muyshondt, Duy Thien Nguyen, Richard Skifton
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 12 | December 2022 | Pages 1769-1805
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2022.2081482
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The verification and validation of Pronghorn is imperative for predicting the fluid velocity, pressure, and temperature in advanced reactors, specifically high-temperature gas-cooled reactors. Pronghorn is a coarse-mesh, intermediate-fidelity, multidimensional thermal-hydraulic code developed by Idaho National Laboratory. The Pronghorn incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are validated by using the pressure drop measurements and axial velocity averaged from the particle image velocimetry data obtained at the engineering-scale pebble bed facility at Texas A&M University.
Pronghorn and STAR-CCM+ porous media models using the Handley, Kerntechnischer Ausschuss, and Carman correlations comparably estimate the pressure drop better than other functions with a maximum 3.34% average relative difference compared to the experimental measurements. The precise average pebble bed porosity estimation has a large impact on the pressure drop. The implementation of the volume-averaged porosity in several sectors, with each sector’s thickness larger than the representative elementary length, has the potential to improve pressure drop modeling or provide more detailed velocity profiles in nuclear reactors with high aspect ratios. The wall effects can be considered using this approach, applying the relatively higher volume-averaged porosity near walls. In addition, the pressure gradients and volume- or surface-averaged axial velocities from the realizable two-layer and shear stress transport models are in good agreement with the porous media simulations and particle image velocimetry data.