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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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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A new ANSI/ANS standard for liquid metal fire protection published
ANSI/ANS-54.8-2025, Liquid Metal Fire Protection in LMR Plants, received approval from the American National Standards Institute on September 2 and is now available for purchase.
The 2025 edition is a reinvigoration of the withdrawn ANS-54.8-1988 of the same title. The Advanced Reactor Codes and Standards Collaborative (ARCSC) identified the need for a current version of the standard via an industry survey.
Typical liquid metal reactor designs use liquid sodium as the coolant for both the primary and intermediate heat-transport systems. In addition, liquid sodium and NaK (a mixture of sodium and potassium that is liquid at room temperature) are often used in auxiliary heat-removal systems. Since these liquid metals can react readily with oxygen, water, and other compounds, special precautions must be taken in the design, construction, testing, and maintenance of the sodium/NaK systems to ensure that the potential for leakage is very small.
K. R. Merckx
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 10 | Number 3 | July 1961 | Pages 223-227
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE61-A25964
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The temperature distributions within plate or thin tubular fuel elements with bonded end closures are determined with an eigen-function expansion. A one-term approximation is given for end caps longer than the plate thickness. Numerical examples are included for uranium fuel elements with Zircaloy cladding and bonded Zircaloy end caps whose lengths are twice, once, and one-fifth the thickness of the fuel plate. For these examples the ratios of the maximum exterior end cap temperature to the maximum temperature of the fuel material (coolant temperature considered as the base temperature) were 0.38, 0.68, and 0.954, respectively.
