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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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OECD NEA meeting focuses on irradiation experiments
Members of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s Second Framework for Irradiation Experiments (FIDES-II) joint undertaking gathered from September 29 to October 3 in Ketchum, Idaho, for the technical advisory group and governing board meetings hosted by Idaho National Laboratory. The FIDES-II Framework aims to ensure and foster competences in experimental nuclear fuel and structural materials in-reactor experiments through a diverse set of Joint Experimental Programs (JEEPs).
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.