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Division Spotlight
Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
Meeting Spotlight
International Conference on Mathematics and Computational Methods Applied to Nuclear Science and Engineering (M&C 2025)
April 27–30, 2025
Denver, CO|The Westin Denver Downtown
Standards Program
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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May 2025
Latest News
Argonne’s METL gears up to test more sodium fast reactor components
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Werner Oldekop, Hans-Dieter Berger, Wilfried Zeggel
Nuclear Technology | Volume 59 | Number 2 | November 1982 | Pages 212-227
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT82-A33024
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The main feature of an advanced pressurized water reactor (APWR) with improved fuel utilization is a plutonium-enriched tight lattice core integrated in an unchanged primary system of a common pressurized water reactor (PWR) power station. Neutron physical investigations demonstrate that conversion ratios in excess of 0.9 and final burnups of ∼45 000 MWd/tHM are obtained with a reload enrichment of 7.5% fissile plutonium. The moderator-void coefficient is calculated to be negative. The high-pressure drop of an APWR core is compensated for by a slightly reduced coolant flow rate. Despite the fact that calculated safety parameters such as void coefficient, critical heat flux margin, and emergency core cooling behavior have to be proven by experiments, the homogeneous concept of a high-converting PWR appears to be feasible.