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Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver 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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Dragonfly, a Pu-fueled drone heading to Titan, gets key NASA approval
Curiosity landed on Mars sporting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) in 2012, and a second NASA rover, Perseverance, landed in 2021. Both are still rolling across the red planet in the name of science. Another exploratory craft with a similar plutonium-238–fueled RTG but a very different mission—to fly between multiple test sites on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon—recently got one step closer to deployment.
On April 25, NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) announced that the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s icy moon passed its critical design review. “Passing this mission milestone means that Dragonfly’s mission design, fabrication, integration, and test plans are all approved, and the mission can now turn its attention to the construction of the spacecraft itself,” according to NASA.
Om Prakash Joneja, J.-P. Schneeberger, Vijay R. Nargundkar
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 23 | Number 4 | July 1993 | Pages 400-407
Technical Paper | Blanket Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST93-A30132
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Integral tritium production rate (TPR) measurements are important in comparisons of calculations to ascertain the suitability of computer codes and cross-section sets used in calculation. At the LOTUS facility, one of the objectives is to make measurements with different types of pure fusion and hybrid blankets and compare the results with calculations. Since the concrete cavity housing the blankets is small, it is of direct relevance to determine the influence of room-reflected neutrons on the integral TPR and, if possible, to reduce this effect by special absorbers. The effects on the TPR of a stainless steel—natural lithium—graphite-reflected blanket due to the concrete structure, B4C filter, and boron-loaded sheets covering the assembly are studied. Calculations are performed by the MCNP Monte Carlo code. Since the room-returned component depends strongly on the composition of the concrete and, moreover, does not correspond to a real blanket situation, it is advisable to compare measurements with calculations for the region where such interference is minimal. A central region measuring 30.15 × 26.25 × 60 cm3 is identified for the purpose of comparison. In addition to calculations for a fully homogenized blanket, the important central blanket region is considered in the form of rods, and the remaining blanket as a homogeneous region, to assess the effect of neutron streaming on the TPR of the assembly. An experiment is done by irradiating several Li2CO3 probes positioned in each tube so that the central region of interest is fully covered. The activity of the probes is measured by the standard liquid scintillation method, and the TPR for the entire region can be derived from the experimental reaction rate data. The complete details of the calculational model and the experimental procedure are provided. Good agreement is found between the calculated and experimental TPRs after accounting for various sources of errors. This suggests that the three-dimensional description of the source and the blanket arrangement employed for the calculations are quite satisfactory.
