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Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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Breaking ground on a new approach to construction
The drive to Kairos Power’s reactor demonstration site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is not only scenic—it’s historic. Nearly 85 years ago, roughly 30,000 construction workers transformed orchards and farmland into a key Manhattan Project site. Depending on your route, you may pass by one of the three gatehouses that were once military checkpoints controlling access to Atomic Energy Commission production facilities.
C. E. Dickerman, E. S. Sowa, J. H. Monaweck, A. Barsell
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 18 | Number 3 | March 1964 | Pages 319-328
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE64-A20052
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experiments have been performed in-pile, using the Transient Reactor Test Facility, to study the meltdown behavior under transient heating of metallic Experimental Breeder Reactor-II fuel elements contained in stagnant sodium. Threshold of failure, modes of failure, and post-experiment distribution of fuel were obtained for a range of experimental conditions including uniform axial power and axial-power profile shaped to approximate a typical power profile of a fast-reactor core. Samples were exposed both with sodium initially at saturation conditions, and with sodium pressurized to inhibit boiling. Although the presence of stagnant sodium was found to modify qualitatively the results found previously for dry EBR-II samples, the changes were not great, and results were consistent with those for dry elements.