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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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Latest News
House E&C members question the DOE
As work progresses on the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program, which will progress through DOE authorization rather than Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing, three members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce have sent a critical letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
The letter demands “information about the DOE and its employees’ dealings with the NRC and its staff” and expresses concern that DOE staff has “broken the firewall” between the departments.
Muhammad Ishaq, Muhammad Ilyas, Alam Nawaz Khan Wardag, Muhammad Zaman, Mansoor H. Inayat
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 6 | June 2023 | Pages 1071-1099
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2022.2139565
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The main aim of the natural circulation of the primary coolant in a nuclear reactor is to reject heat from the reactor core to the steam generator without using a circulation pump. In this work, a vertical heater–vertical cooler, high-temperature, high-pressure, nonuniform-diameter, single-phase natural circulation loop is proposed. The rig contains a spacer grid assembly of electrical heaters in a core with a conical section in its upper plenum and a double helical coil steam generator. The proposed loop is analyzed using RELAP5 and various analytical models. First, these models are benchmarked with experimental data from the Facility to Investigate Natural Circulation in SMART or FINCLS. The model results are found to be in good agreement with the experimental data. The same models are then employed to investigate the proposed natural circulation facility, named the Integral PWR-type SMR Test Rig (iPSTR), to investigate the mass flow rate as a function of geometric and process parameters. Core power input was varied from 5 to 82.5 kW at a maximum system pressure of 10 bar and a maximum elevation difference of thermal centers of 3400 mm. Elevation differences of the thermal centers and diameter of core are found to be important parameters that affect thermal-hydraulic performance significantly. However, cone angle, spacer grid, and system pressure are found to have no significant effect on the performance of the iPSTR. Moreover, the proposed iPSTR is found to possess higher Reynolds number compared with the existing facilities.