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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
2025 ANS Annual Conference
June 15–18, 2025
Chicago, IL|Chicago Marriott Downtown
Standards Program
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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High-temperature plumbing and advanced reactors
The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.1–3
Joel McDuffee, Rich Christensen, Daniel Eichel, Mike Simpson, Supathorn Phongikaroon, Xiaodong Sun, John Baird, Adam Burak, Shay Chapel, Joonhyung Choi, Jacob Gorton, D. Ethan Hamilton, Dimitris Killinger, Sam Miller, Jason Palmer, Christian Petrie, Daniel Sweeney, Adrian Schrell, James Vollmer
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 1 | October 2022 | Pages S234-S259
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2021.2017663
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The mission of the Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) is to enable accelerated testing of advanced reactor fuels and materials as required for advanced reactor technologies. Each advanced reactor type has unique challenges, and these challenges affect the design of the testing vehicles used for accelerated testing. For molten salt reactor testing, some of the key focus areas are (1) understanding the complex thermal-hydraulic systems and materials that will facilitate heat removal from the reactor core, (2) mitigating the corrosion-associated issues that arise from using these materials at high temperatures, and (3) understanding how to measure and control salt composition/chemistry and properties during irradiation. This paper details the progress made toward surmounting these challenges to support future molten salt cartridge experiments in the VTR. Broadly, this work involves two major thrusts: design and analysis of an operating cartridge loop, and development of the instrumentation and control system needed to operate the loop successfully.