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Robotics & Remote Systems
The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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
Chad A. Nixon, Wade R. Marcum
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 5 | May 2023 | Pages 788-812
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2058846
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Vibration of nuclear power plant components can cause fretting wear and fatigue that can eventually lead to component failure. Flexible, high-aspect-ratio components under flow, such as the wire-wrapped cylindrical fuel elements in a liquid metal-cooled fast reactor core, are particularly susceptible to vibration due to their low natural frequencies. The flow-induced vibrations experienced by such components tend to be random and of low amplitude and frequency; however, at critical flow velocities these components can experience self-excited, fluid-elastic instabilities that can lead to immediate failure. Such failures of critical reactor components, particularly those that act as fission product barriers, can lead to prolonged shutdowns of nuclear power plants and even to their permanent closure. Thus, a better understanding of the vibration response of wire-wrapped cylinders in axial flow is needed. This study details the development of a theoretical model that incorporates the effects of a helical wire wrap along a cylinder to understand its impact on the dynamic response of the cylinder under flow. This theoretical model is compared against experimental vibration data of varying geometries of solitary wire-wrapped cylinders in confined axial flow. The results of this study provide an improved knowledge of how a helical wire wrap can affect the dynamic response of a cylinder under flow.