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Conference Spotlight
2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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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
IAEA again raises global nuclear power projections
Noting recent momentum behind nuclear power, the International Atomic Energy Agency has revised up its projections for the expansion of nuclear power, estimating that global nuclear operational capacity will more than double by 2050—reaching 2.6 times the 2024 level—with small modular reactors expected to play a pivotal role in this high-case scenario.
IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi announced the new projections, contained in the annual report Energy, Electricity, and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2050 at the 69th IAEA General Conference in Vienna.
In the report’s high-case scenario, nuclear electrical generating capacity is projected to increase to from 377 GW at the end of 2024 to 992 GW by 2050. In a low-case scenario, capacity rises 50 percent, compared with 2024, to 561 GW. SMRs are projected to account for 24 percent of the new capacity added in the high case and for 5 percent in the low case.
Yu Weng, Fangfang Cao, Xiaobing Tuo, Hongfang Gu, Haijun Wang
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 190 | Number 1 | April 2018 | Pages 93-104
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2017.1417345
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In a 1250-MW pressurized water reactor (PWR), coolant is injected into the reactor vessel under accident conditions through the method of direct injection, which is the most important function of the emergency core cooling system. Since the problem has been found that safety injection start-up will have a significant thermal effect on the reactor’s internal system, a confirmatory study of an improved structure is required in the initial design stage. In this paper, the heat transfer and flow characteristics of the core barrel, the neutron shielding panels, and the radiation surveillance capsules are investigated by a scaled experiment combined with a numerical method to obtain the distribution of the wall temperature and the convective heat transfer coefficient on the outer wall of the reactor internals under different injection conditions. In addition, potentially dangerous parts have been pointed out, and dimensionless correlations are fitted to describe the heat transfer laws of key parts of reactor internals for use in reactor design. This research fills in the gaps in the study of heat transfer under direct injection of the reactor internals in a PWR, providing support for the safety of the reactor structure.