ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Annual Conference
May 31–June 3, 2026
Denver, CO|Sheraton Denver
Latest Magazine Issues
Mar 2026
Jan 2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
March 2026
Nuclear Technology
February 2026
Fusion Science and Technology
April 2026
Latest News
DOE nuclear cleanup costs, schedule delays continue to rise, GAO says
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management faces significant cost increases, schedule delays, and data management issues in completing nuclear waste cleanup projects, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
D. Haas, J. van de Velde, H. Braun
Nuclear Technology | Volume 43 | Number 1 | April 1979 | Pages 100-108
Technical Paper | Material | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A16178
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the Rapsodie-I experiment, two bundles, each containing 34 fast breeder reactor fuel pins, have been irradiated up to a peak burnup of 10.6 at.% and to a peak fast fluence (E > 0.1 MeV) of 6.65 × 1026 n/m2. One of the main objectives of this experiment was to evaluate the mechanical behavior of a bundle with spacer grids. Two types of spacer grid designs have been tested: namely, a brazed ferrule grid design and a honeycomb spot-welded grid design. The grid material was in every case niobium-stabilized austenitic stainless steel type W.Nr. 1.4981 in the annealed condition. The density and the dimensional measurements carried out on the spacer grids revealed that the geometrical changes in the grids were almost entirely due to material void swelling. In some cases, however, mechanical interactions between grids and wrapper tubes and also between fuel pins and grid cells have been emphasized. These interactions had no detrimental influence on the in-pile bundle behavior. The postirradiation mechanical tests carried out on the honeycomb spacer grids showed that the mechanical properties of the grid cells have not been significantly altered by the irradiation. A decrease of the grid material Young’s modulus has been correlated with void swelling. It has been concluded that the spacer grids operated satisfactorily despite their severe loading conditions.