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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.
Peter K. Mast, James H. Scott
Nuclear Technology | Volume 46 | Number 3 | December 1979 | Pages 600-605
Technical Paper | Nuclear Power Reactor Safety / Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A32371
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new fuel pin failure model, the Los Alamos Failure Model (LAFM), based on a linear life fraction rule failure criterion, has been developed to provide a reliable and inexpensive prediction of the time and axial location of liquid-metal fast breeder reactor fuel pin failure in a hypothetical transient overpower (TOP) accident. Code testing analyses for a number of TOP Transient Reactor Test Facility tests have resulted in excellent agreement between calculated and observed pin failure time and location. Because of the nature of the failure criterion used, the code has also been used to investigate the extent of cladding damage incurred in terminated as well as unterminated TOP transients in the fast test reactor. The results of these analyses show that 3 dollar/s and 50 and 5 cent/s transients terminated by the secondary trip point (25% overpower) result in negligible calculated cladding damage.