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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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New coolants, new fuels: A new generation of university reactors
Here’s an easy way to make aging U.S. power reactors look relatively youthful: Compare them (average age: 43) with the nation’s university research reactors. The 25 operating today have been licensed for an average of about 58 years.
Paul B. Abramson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 35 | Number 1 | August 1977 | Pages 87-96
Technical Paper | Reactor Siting | doi.org/10.13182/NT77-A31852
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the very unlikely event of a loss-of-flow accident in a liquid-metal fast breeder reactor being accompanied by complete failure to scram, the reactor could go prompt critical, generating a large amount of neutronic heat on a millisecond time scale. We find that fuel-to-steel heat transfer has a minimal influence upon the neutronic energy deposition during the prompt burst but that it can play an important role in material behavior in later stages of the hypothetical core disruptive accident. Furthermore, results obtained indicate that calculations of thermodynamic potential energy through adiabatic expansion to one atmosphere are conservative if performed at the end of the prompt burst and that fuel-to-steel heat transfer may significantly reduce the available work energy within the next 20 ms.