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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Nuclear Dirigo
On April 22, 1959, Rear Admiral George J. King, superintendent of the Maine Maritime Academy, announced that following the completion of the 1960 training cruise, cadets would begin the study of nuclear engineering. Courses at that time included radiation physics, reactor control and instrumentation, reactor theory and engineering, thermodynamics, shielding, core design, reactor maintenance, and nuclear aspects.
Paul W. Humrickhouse, Brad J. Merrill
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 67 | Number 1 | January 2015 | Pages 167-178
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-799
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
ARIES-ACT1 (Advanced and Conservative Tokamak) is a 1000-MW(electric) tokamak design featuring advanced plasma physics and divertor and blanket engineering. Some relevant features include an advanced SiC blanket with PbLi as coolant and breeder; a helium-cooled steel structural ring and tungsten divertors; a thin-walled, helium-cooled vacuum vessel; and a room-temperature, water-cooled shield outside the vacuum vessel. We consider here some safety aspects of the ARIES-ACT1 design and model a series of design-basis and beyond-design-basis accidents with the MELCOR code modified for fusion. The presence of multiple coolants (PbLi, helium, and water) makes possible a variety of such accidents. We consider here a loss-of-flow accident caused by a long-term station blackout (LTSBO), an ex-vessel helium break into the cryostat, and a beyond-design-basis accident in which a LTSBO is aggravated by a loss-of-coolant accident in ARIES-ACT1's ultimate decay heat removal system, the water-cooled shield. In the design-basis accidents, we find that the secondary confinement boundaries are not challenged, and the structural integrity of in-vessel components is not threatened by high temperatures or pressures; decay heat can be passively removed.