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2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
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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
High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
L. M. Garrison, G. L. Kulcinski
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 2 | August 2013 | Pages 216-220
Materials Development | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 1), Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A18079
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Single crystal tungsten samples with orientation (110) were irradiated in the Materials Irradiation Experiment with normal incidence 30 keV He+ at 900 aC. Samples were mechanically polished and then electropolished with a KOH solution before irradiation to 3×1017 to 6×1018 He+/cm2. With increasing fluence sample surface pore size increased from ~20 nm to more than 100 nm. Mass loss also increased with fluence to a maximum of 15 g/m2 lost for the highest fluence sample.
